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THE UNITED STATES BUREAU OF FISHERIES * ITS 
ESTABLISHMENT, FUNCTIONS, ORGANIZATION, 
RESOURCES, OPERATIONS, AND ACHIEVEMENTS 

From BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF FISHERIES, Volume XXVIII, 1908 
Proceedings of the Fourth International Fishery Congress : : Washington, 1908 




WASHINGTON :::::: GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE : : : : : : 1910 



/ 



THE UNITED STATES BUREAU OF FISHERIES * ITS 
ESTABLISHMENT, FUNCTIONS, ORGANIZATION, 
RESOURCES, OPERATIONS, AND ACHIEVEMENTS 



From BULLETIN OF THE "BUREAU OF FISHERIES, Volume XXVIII, i< 



Proceedings of the Fourth International Fishery Congress 



Washington, 1908 







WASHINGTON 



GOVERNMENT PRINTING 'OFFICE : : 



1910 






vs.*.- 



BUREAU OF FISHERIES DOCUMENT NO. 725 
Second edition, issued May, 1910 






2 



THE UNITED STATES BUREAU OF FISHERIES 

ITS ESTABLISHMENT, FUNCTIONS. ORGANIZATION 
RESOURCES, OPERATIONS, AND ACHIEVEMENTS 



By Hugh M. Smith 

Deputy Commissioner of Fisheries 



Paper presented before the Fourth International Fishery Congress 
held at Washington, U. S. A., September 22 to 26, 1908 



1365 



CONTENTS. 

Page. 

Establishment and functions 1367 

Organization 1369 

Resources and investment 1370 

Cultivation and distribution of food fishes 1371 

General importance and extent 1371 

Species cultivated 1372 

Hatcheries operated 1373 

Output and its distribution 1379 

Popularity of the work 1382 

Scientific inquiry 1383 

Statistics and methods of the fisheries 1385 

Alaska salmon-inspection service 1392 

Relations with the States and with foreign countries 1393 

Publications 1395 

Some results of the work 1398 

Fish culture 1 398 

Acclimatization 1402 

Biological investigations and experiments 1406 

Commercial fisheries 1410 

1366 



But. U. S. B. F., 190S. 



Plate CXLIII. 




G. Brown Goode, 
1887-1888. 



John J. Brice, 
1S96-189S. 



UNITED STATES COMMISSIONERS OF FISHERIES. 



Spencer F. Baird, 
1S71-18S7. 



Marshall McDonald, 
1888-1S95. 



George M. Bowers, 
1S9S to date. 



THE UNITED STATES BUREAU OF FISHERIES: 

ITS ESTABLISHMENT, FUNCTIONS, ORGANIZATION 
RESOURCES, OPERATIONS, AND ACHIEVEMENTS. 



By HUGH M. SMITH, 
Deputy Commissioner of Fisheries. 

J* 

ESTABLISHMENT AND FUNCTIONS. 

Prior to 1 871 there was no branch of the United States Government 
especially charged with the consideration of fishery affairs, although fishery 
questions of greater or less import, some domestic, some foreign, had been 
arising ever since the achievement of national independence. Several of the 
States had already established fish commissions, and there arose among the 
state fishery authorities and the members of the American Fish Cultural Asso- 
ciation (now the American Fisheries Society) an urgent demand for a national 
bureau devoted to fishery interests. Congress was thus influenced to action, 
and in the year named passed a joint resolution creating the office of Commis- 
sioner of Fish and Fisheries, whose duties were specified as follows: 

The Commissioner of Fish and Fisheries shall prosecute investigations and inquiries 
on the subject, with the view of ascertaining whether any and what diminution in the 
number of the food-fishes of the coast and the lakes of the United States has taken 
place; and, if so, to what causes the same is due; and also whether any and what pro- 
tective, prohibitory, or precautionary measures should be adopted in the premises; 
and shall report upon the same to Congress. 

It was further provided that the commissioner should be a civil officer of 
the Government, of proved scientific and practical acquaintance with the fishes 
of the coast, who would serve without additional compensation. The man 
generally regarded as preeminently qualified for the new position was Spencer 
Fullerton Baird, then Assistant Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, who 

1367 



1368 BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF FISHERIES. 

received the appointment, at once entered on his duties, and continued the 
efficient and highly respected head of the commission until his death, in 1887. 

Professor Baird was succeeded by one of his ablest assistants, Dr. George 
Brown Goode, eminent as administrator, ichthyologist, and fishery expert, who, 
however, voluntarily relinquished the commissionership after less than a year's 
incumbency in order to devote his entire time to the National Museum, of which 
he was director. Next came Commissioner McDonald, practical fish culturist 
and inventor of important mechanical appliances now used in the hatching of 
fish all over the world, who served until his death, in 1895, and was the first 
salaried commissioner. He was followed by Capt. John J. Brice, a retired naval 
officer, who held the office for two years and was succeeded in 1898 by the 
present commissioner, Hon. George Meade Bowers, under whose ten years' 
administration the service has grown in all its branches. 

From the very outset of its career, the fishery service has had the active 
support and cooperation of many of the leading biologists, fish culturists, and 
fishery experts of the country, whose volunteer assistance has been an important 
factor in its development and efficiency. The early years of the Bureau were 
devoted to an active investigation of the condition of the fisheries of the 
Atlantic coast, Great Lakes, and other sections; to studies of the interior and 
coastal waters and their inhabitants, and to exploration of the offshore fishing 
banks. The cultivation of useful fishes was soon taken up throughout the 
country, and quickly attained large proportions. The natural expansion of the 
work was materially augmented from time to time by acts of Congress, and in 
a comparatively short time the operations came to have a very wide scope. In 
more recent years the work has been still further extended, so that at present 
there is scarcely a phase of aquiculture, of the fishing industry, or of biological 
and physical science as connected with the waters that does not come within 
the purview of the Bureau. 

For many years the Bureau was without any executive control in fishery 
affairs. Under the Constitution the States legislate for themselves in such 
matters and the Federal Government has assumed no jurisdiction. The 
Bureau thus had no direct voice in the making or enforcing of any measures 
for the protection or preservation of aquatic animals, and its position, 
compared with the fishery service of other countries, was anomalous. In its 
advisory capacity, however, the Bureau has acquired an influence upon fishery 
legislation, and has now been given executive powers in Alaska for the enforce- 
ment of a comprehensive code of laws affecting the salmon fisheries. In the 
interests of the fur-seal fisheries the Bureau has since 1893 been called on to 
study the life history and migrations of the seals, to inspect conditions on the 
islands, and to submit recommendations concerning the killing of the animals. 



THE UXITED STATES BUREAU OF FISHERIES. 1 369 

ORGANIZATION. 

Until 1903 the Bureau was known as the "United States Commission of 
Fish and Fisheries," and was an independent institution of the Government, 
responsible directly to Congress. In that year it was included in the new 
Department of Commerce and Labor, becoming the United States Bureau of 
Fisheries, as known at present. 

The work at the outset naturally fell under the three general heads of 
scientific investigation, fishery inquiry, and fish culture. This classification has 
been extended and perfected, and enters into the organization at the present time. 

The permanent personnel of the service includes 325 persons, of whom 83 
are on duty in Washington and 242 are at outside stations, at laboratories, and 
on vessels. The officials under the commissioner are a deputy commissioner, 
a chief clerk, and a chief of each of the three divisions before referred to. All 
subordinates are appointed, after passing the prescribed examinations, from 
the registers maintained by the Civil Service Commission. 

The deputy commissioner is the executive next to the commissioner, and 
acts with full powers in the latter's absence. The commissioner's office, which 
represents the administrative division of the Bureau and has the chief clerk at 
its head, has under it the accounting office, the office of the architect and engi- 
neer, and the office of vessels, in addition to the library, records, correspondence, 
and property. In this division there is a technical and clerical force of 20 
persons, not including messengers, watchmen, janitors, engineers, firemen, and 
laborers, and the 34 civil employees in the vessel sendee. 

The chief of the Division of Fish Culture, with an office force of 7, directs 
the operations at the hatcheries and the planting of fish. Each hatchery has a 
force consisting of a superintendent, fish culturist, skilled laborers, etc., the 
number of employees for all the stations reaching a total of 168. In addition to 
these there are 13 superintendents, fish culturists, and other employees at large. 
During the busy seasons the hatchery force is increased by the temporary 
employment of many spawntakers and laborers as the work requires. For the 
distribution of eggs and young fish there are 6 transportation cars permanently 
provided with crews of messengers, numbering in all 26 men. The car and 
messenger service is under the immediate direction of a superintendent. 

The Division of Scientific Inquiry includes besides its chief 6 scientific 
assistants and a number of clerks. Three special agents are employed in the 
Alaska inspection service, which is under this division, and 3 persons are per- 
manently employed at the biological laboratory at Beaufort, N. C. Numer- 
ous investigators and assistants are also employed temporarily as needed for 
the study of special problems at the laboratories and in the field. 

In the Division of Statistics and Methods of the Fisheries there are the chief, 
4 statistical field agents, 2 local agents, and 8 clerks, some of whom are avail- 
able for field work. 



I370 BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF FISHERIES. 

RESOURCES AND INVESTMENT. 

The only funds available for the operation of the Bureau are the moneys 
voted annually by Congress. The comparatively large sums collected yearly 
in the Alaska salmon-inspection service are covered intact into the Treasury. 
From its very modest beginning, with $5,000 allowed for its work, the Bureau 
has won such recognition from Congress that the appropriations for its main- 
tenance have increased steadily, and for the current fiscal year, ending June 30, 
1909, reached the substantial amount of $803,920, apportioned as follows: 

Administration: 

Salaries $45 , 380 

Miscellaneous expenses 8, 000 

Propagation of food fishes: 
Salaries — 

Office n, 820 

Stations and field service 156, 420 

Car and messenger service 23, 100 

Miscellaneous expenses 275, 000 

Inquiry respecting food fishes: 
Salaries — 

Office 13, 640 

Biological station at Jeaufort, N. C 2, 700 

Miscellaneous expenses 30, 000 

Statistical inquiry: 

Salaries 17, 140 

Miscellaneous expenses 7, 500 

Vessel service: 

Salaries 29, 420 

Miscellaneous expenses 70, 000 

Alaska salmon-inspection service (salaries) 6, 300 

Special: 

Establishment of station for propagation of fresh-water mussels in 

Mississippi Valley 25, 000 

Construction of new steam vessel for Alaska service 20, 000 

Improvements and repairs at stations 44, 500 

Repairs to steamer Albatross 18,000 

Total 803 ,920 

The land owned and occupied by the Bureau at its fish-cultural and bio- 
logical stations has an aggregate area of over 12,000 acres, with a value of 
$240,000. The improvements and equipments at these stations represent an 
investment of more than $1,000,000. Other property of the Bureau includes 
4 seagoing steam and sail vessels, 20 steam launches, and 150 small sail, power, 
and row boats, which, with equipment, have a value of $300,000. Its 6 fish- 
transportation cars are valued at $45,000. The aggregate investment of the 
Federal Government in property devoted to the fishery service is thus about 
$1,585,000. 



Bul. U. S. B. F., 1908. 



Plate CXLIV. 




Headquarters of the Bureau of Fisheries, Washington, D. C. 




Superintendent's residence at a New England trout-hatching station. 



■1 

.3 



THE UNITED STATES BUREAU OF FISHERIES. 137 1 

CULTIVATION AND DISTRIBUTION OF FOOD FISHES. 
GENERAL IMPORTANCE AND EXTENT. 

The artificial propagation of fishes was not contemplated at the time the 
Bureau was formed, but was instituted by an act of Congress in 1872 at the insti- 
gation of the American Fish Cultural Association, which had been organized 
two years before and had taken a leading part in the establishment of the 
Bureau. The fishes to which attention was given first were the shad, the Atlantic 
salmon, and the whitefish. This work proved so popular that it was extended 
annually, was supplemented by efforts in acclimatization, and soon overshadowed 
all other branches. 

The Bureau has labored to make its operations commensurate with the 
extent of the fisheries in public waters, and with the inevitable exhaustion of 
the native fish life in the smaller lakes and streams incident to the development 
of the country and the increase of population. The policy, as enunciated by 
Doctor Goode, has been to carry out the idea that it is better to expend a small 
amount of public money in making fish so abundant that they can be caught 
without restriction and serve as cheap food for the people at large than to 
expend a nuch larger sum in preventing the people from catching the few fish 
that still r ^main after generations of improvidence. 

From this standpoint it is perhaps fortunate that up to the present the 
Bureau has not had to devote its major energies to the formulation and enforce- 
ment of fishery legislation, but has been able to work directly for the increase 
of fish life. Public or government fish culture has in America attained tre- 
mendous proportions, and exceeds in extent and importance that of all other 
countries combined. However, the neglect of some of the States to provide 
the minimum protection to certain species inhabiting interstate and inter- 
national waters has not only negatived the fish-cultural work of the Bureau 
and of the States themselves, but has practically inhibited it by preventing 
the possibility of securing an adequate supply of eggs, thus making desirable 
and necessary the institution of a new policy placing interstate and international 
waters under the jurisdiction of the General Government. 

In the work of the Bureau of Fisheries the United States Government has 
an especial and unique claim to the epithet "paternal." The stocking of 
waters with food fishes is a direct benefit to the public, not only increasing the 
very material that supports an enormous industry, but providing food itself 
for the individual who will use his hook and line. From year to year, as the 
importance of the work has become increasingly evident, additional hatcheries 
have been built, the capacity of existing hatcheries has been enlarged, the scale 
of the operations has been extended, new kinds of fishes have been added to 
the output, and new sections have been brought under the direct influence of 
the work. 



1372 BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF FISHERIES. 

THE SPECIES CULTIVATED. 

At the end of the first ten years of the Bureau's existence the fishes that 
were being regularly cultivated were shad, carp, chinook salmon, Atlantic sal- 
mon, landlocked salmon, rainbow trout, brook trout, and whitefish, in addition 
to which the propagation of several others had been undertaken experimentally. 
The list now is six times as long, and the annual output is ten times the aggregate 
for the ten-year period ended in 1881. The main energies are devoted to the 
important commercial fishes — shad, whitefish, lake trout, Pacific salmons, white 
perch, yellow perch, cod, flatfish — and the lobster, which are hatched in lots of 
many millions annually. More widely popular, however, are the distributions 
of the fishes of the interior waters which are generally classed as game fishes. 
Although representing only about 10 per cent of the output of the hatcheries, 
this feature of the work is very important, for it supplies choice kinds of fish for 
public rivers, lakes, and ponds, and for fishing preserves and private ponds and 
streams in all parts of the United States. The fishes most in demand for these 
purposes are the landlocked salmon, the different species of trout, the grayling, 
the basses, the crappies, the sunfishes, and the catfishes, but various others also 
are handled. Following is a classified list of the native fishes artificially propa- 
gated during 1908: 

The catfishes (Silurid^e): 

Spotted cat, blue cat, channel cat (Ictalurus punctatus). 

Horned pout, bullhead, yellow cat {Ameiurus nebulosus). 

Marbled cat {Ameiurus nebulosus marmoraius). 
The shads and herrings (Clupeid/E): 

Shad (Alosa sapidissima). 
The salmons, trouts, whiteftshes, etc. (SalmoniD/E) : 

Common whitefish (Coregonus clupeijormis). 

Lake herring, cisco (Argyrosomus artedi). 

Chinook salmon, king salmon, quinnat salmon (Oncorhynchus tschawylscha). 

Silver salmon, coho (Oncorhynchus kisutch). 

Blueback salmon, redfish, sockeye (Oncorhynchus nerka). 

Humpback salmon (Oncorhynchus gorbuscha). 

Steelhead (Salmo gairdneri). 

Rainbow trout (Salmo irideus). 

Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar). 

Landlocked salmon (Salmo sebago). 

Yellowstone Lake trout, cut-throat trout, black-spotted trout (Salmo lewisi). 

Colorado River trout, black-spotted trout (Salmo pleuriticus) . 

Golden trout (Salmo roosevelli). 

Lake trout, Mackinaw trout, longe, togue (Cristivomer namaycush). 

Brook trout, speckled trout (Salvelinus jontinalis). 

Sunapee trout (Salvelinus aureolus). 

Canadian red trout (Salvelinus marstoni). 

Hybrid trout (Salvelinus aureolus + jontinalis). 
The graylings (Thymallhxe) : 

Montana grayling (Thymallus montanus). 



THE UNITED STATES BUREAU OF FISHERIES. 1 373 

The basses, sunfishes, and crappies (Centrarchid^): 

Crappy {Pomoxis annularis). 

Strawberry bass, calico bass (Pomoxis sparoides). 

Rock bass, red-eye, goggle-eye {Ambloplites rupeslris). 

Warmouth, goggle-eye {Chcenobryttus gulosus). 

Small-mouth black bass {Micropterus dolomieu). 

Large-mouth black bass {Micropterus salinoides) . 

Bluegill sunfish {Lepomis pallidus). 
The perches (Percid^e): 

Pike perch, wall-eyed pike, yellow pike, blue pike (Stizostedion vitreum). 

Yellow perch {Perca flavescens). 

The sea basses (Serranid^e) : 

Striped bass, rockfish {Roccus lineatus). 

White bass {Roccus chrysops). 

White perch {Morone americana). 

Yellow bass {Morone interrupta). 
The drums (Scmnid^e): 

Fresh-water drum {Aplodinotus grunniens). 
The labrids (Labrid^e): 

Tautog, blackfish {Tautoga onitis). 
The cods (Gadid^e): 

Cod {Gadus callarias). 

Pollock {Pollachius -sirens). 

Haddock {Melanogrammus ceglifinus). 
The flounders (Pleuronectid.e) : 

Winter flounder, American flatfish (Pseudopleuronectes americanus) . 
Crustaceans: 

American lobster {Homarus americanus). 

In addition to the foregoing, various kinds of fishes are obtained from the 
overflows in the Mississippi Valley and distributed. Among these are the small- 
mouth buffalo-fish (Ictiobus bubalus) , the pike (Esox lucius) , the pickerel (Esox 
reticulatus) , and several sunfishes (chiefly Eupomotis gibbosus). From this same 
source are also collected large numbers of large-mouth black bass, crappies, 
rock bass, and bluegill sunfish. The following introduced species are cultivated 
to a limited extent : 

Carp {Cyprinus carpio). Propagated chiefly for food for other fishes. 

Goldfish {Carassius auratus). Propagated for ornamental purposes. 

Tench {Tinea tinea). Cultivated varieties, green tench and golden tench; propagated for 

ornamental purposes. 
Ide {Leuciscus idus). Cultivated variety, golden ide; propagated for ornamental purposes. 
European sea trout {Salmo trutta). 
Loch Leven trout {Salmo trutta levenensis). 

THE HATCHERIES OPERATED. 

Fish-cultural stations are established by special act of Congress, and their 
location and construction are determined by the Bureau after a careful survey 
of the available sites in a given State. The plans and specifications for each 
station are prepared in the office of the architect and engineer with reference to 



1374 BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF FISHERIES. 

the nature of the operations to be conducted and the topographical conditions, 
and the work of constructing buildings and ponds is usually done by contract. 
Sometimes, however, the Bureau takes direct charge of construction, as in the 
case of the salmon hatcheries in Alaska. 

The usual buildings at a fish-cultural station are the hatchery proper, a 
residence for the superintendent and his family, and necessary outbuildings. 
At some stations there may be also power house, foreman's or fish-culturist's 
dwelling, mess hall, and stable. The superintendent's and other quarters are 
furnished gratis, but station employees provide their own subsistence. 

All sections of the country are now familiar with government fish-cultural 
work. In addition to the regular hatcheries, with their permanent personnel 
and living quarters, there are maintained numerous auxiliary hatcheries or 
substations which from the nature of their work do not require a permanent 
force and are therefore, for economic and administrative considerations, operated 
as adjuncts of near-by hatcheries. Some of the auxiliary stations, however, 
have more extensive operations than the hatcheries with which they are con- 
nected, and such will doubtless in time be made regular stations. There is 
also another class of stations, known as field or collecting stations, which serve 
as temporary headquarters for parties engaged in obtaining eggs from wild 
fishes. In 1908 the fish-cultural work was conducted in 27 States and Terri- 
tories at 55 hatcheries and subhatcheries and 64 field stations. 

While marine operations have been conducted from time to time at various 
places on the Atlantic coast from Maine to Florida, and have been addressed 
to a large number of species, the only permanent marine hatcheries are in Maine 
and Massachusetts, with the species handled at each as indicated in the 
following table. The places shown under each station are the centers of egg- 
collecting operations. Other sea fishes that have in previous years been arti- 
ficially propagated and may again come under the hand of the fish-culturist 
are the haddock, the scuppaug, the sheepshead, the sea bass, the mackerel, 
and the squeteague, some of which were hatched on the steamer Fish Hawk in 
Chesapeake Bay and Florida. 



Bul. U. S. B. F., 1908. 



Plate CXLY. 




Marine hatchery and laboratory, Woods Hole, Mass., established twenty-five 3'ears ago, and devoted to the culture of 
cod, flounders, and lobsters, the output of which in 1908 was 337 millions. Also the headquarters of important 
biological investigations of the east-coast fauna, the laboratory privileges being accorded gratuitously to qualified 

students. 




Residence at the marine station, Woods Hole, Mass., formerly the summer headquarters of the Bureau, and now 
occupied by the officials of the laboratory and hatchery and by temporary assistants engaged in special work (See 
p. 1384.) 



THE UNITED STATES BUREAU OF FISHERIES. 

Marine Hatcheries. 



1375 



Location. 


Species handled. 




Cod, lobster. 

Lobster. 

Lobster. 

Lobster. 

Cod, pollock, flatfish, lobster. 

Lobster. 

Lobster. 

Lobster. 

Lobster. 

Lobster. 

Cod. 

Lobster. 

Lobster. 

Cod, tautog, flatfish, lobster. 

Lobster. 

Lobster. 

Flatfish. 

Lobster. 

Lobster. 

Lobster. 

Cod. 

Lobster. 

Flatfish. 

Lobster. 

Lobster. 

Lobster. 




Portland, Me .. . _ - 


Kittery Point, Me 

Gloucester, Mass _ __ .. 

Beverly, Mass . _ 


Boston, Mass. _. 




Hull, Mass 


Marblehead, Mass . _ -_ .. 


Plymouth, Mass ._ .. 


Portsmouth, N. H . 




Woods Hole, Mass 


Chilmark, Mass 


Dartmouth, Mass _ _ . _ .. _ 




Gay Head, Mass __ 






Plymouth, Mass . 


Sandwich, Mass ._ 






Yarmouth, Mass 





The fish-cultural work on the eastern coast streams was centered at 
6 hatcheries and subhatcheries in 1908. At 1 of these the principal species 
handled is the Atlantic salmon, at 4 the shad, at 3 the yellow perch, at 2 
the white perch, and at 1 the striped bass. In recent years the Bureau 
has operated a shad hatchery on the Delaware River, and has detailed the 
steamer Fish Hawk for shad hatching in Maine, New Jersey, North Carolina, 
and Florida. The central station, in Washington, is operated largely for experi- 
mental and exhibition purposes, but sometimes receives large numbers of eggs 
from the adjacent river stations, especially when the latter are overstocked. 

Hatcheries on East Coast Rivers. 



Location. 


Fishes handled. 


Craig Brook, Penobscot River, Me. 


Atlantic salmon, landlocked salmon, hump- 
back salmon, brook trout. 
Atlantic salmon. 

Shad, yellow perch, white perch. 
Shad, yellow perch. 
Shad. 

Striped bass. 
Shad, yellow perch, white perch, etc. 


Staceyville, Upper Penobscot River, Me . 

Havre de Grace, Susquehanna River, Md 


Bryans Point, Potomac River, Md 


Edenton, Albemarle Sound, N. C , 


Weldon, Roanoke River, N. C 


Washington, D. C, Potomac River_ 



1376 



BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF FISHERIES. 



In order to counteract the effect of the very exhausting fisheries of the 
Great Lakes, the Government has for many years maintained hatcheries in 
that region, and in 1908 operated 6 belonging to the United States and 2 
belonging to the State of Michigan. The fishes to which attention is given are 
those which enter most largely into the catch of the fishermen, namely, the 
whitefish, cisco, lake trout, and pike perch, the annual output of which now 
exceeds one and one-half billions. Under arrangement with the Canadian 
authorities, 2 egg-collecting stations for whitefish, cisco, and lake trout are 
maintained at points in Ontario. 

Hatcheries on the Great Lakes. 



Location. 


Fishes handled. 




Whitefish, lake trout, brook trout, steel- 
head, iandlocked salmon, pike perch, 
yellow perch. 

Whitefish, lake cisco, lake trout, pike perch. 

Whitefish. 

Whitefish. 

Whitefish, pike perch. 

Whitefish, lake cisco. 

Whitefish, lake cisco. 

Whitefish, lake cisco, pike perch. 

Pike perch. 

Lake trout, etc. 

Whitefish, lake trout. 

Lake trout. 

Whitefish, lake trout. 

Whitefish, pike perch. 

Pike perch. 

Pike perch. 

Whitefish. 

Whitefish. 

Whitefish, lake trout. 

Whitefish, lake trout, pike perch, etc. 

Lake trout. 

Lake trout. 

Lake trout. 

Lake troht. 

Lake trout. 




Kelleys Island, Ohio ° - 

Middle Bass Island, Ohio ° 

Monroe Piers, Mich.° 

North Bass Island, Ohio - - 


Pelee Island, Ontario (Canada) ° . .. 

Port Clinton, Ohio a .__ 


Toledo, Ohio __ 

Northville, Mich.& 


Alpena, Lake Huron, Mich 


Beaver Island, Lake Michigan, Mich.°. 


Detroit, Detroit River, Mich.c 




Bay City, Lake Huron, Mich.° _ . _ _ 


Belle Isle, Detroit River, Mich.° 


Sault Ste. Marie, St. Marys River, Mich.c_ __ 




Isle Royale, Mich °__ . ._ 




Marquette, Mich.° 









a Egg-collecting stations. 

6 Interior station, headquarters of the fish-cultural work in Michigan, conveniently located, and place where most of 
the lake- trout eggs are hatched. 

c Hatcheries belonging to State of Michigan, leased by Bureau of Fisheries. 

The hatcheries on the rivers and lakes of the Pacific coast region are devoted 
almost exclusively to the various salmons. In California, where the Bureau 
established a salmon hatchery as early as 1872, there is one central or main 
station, at Baird, on the McCloud River, with important collecting and eyeing 
stations on two other tributaries of the Sacramento. In Oregon a central 
hatchery at Oregon City, on the Willamette River, has three subhatcheries on 
tributaries of the Columbia in Oregon and Washington and three subhatcheries 



Bul. U. S. B. F., igo8. 



Plate CXI, VI. 




Collecting cod eggs on a fishing vessel. One source of cod eggs hatched at the New England stations is the 
catch of the market fishermen. Spawntakers board the fishing boats, overhaul the fish, and save the 
eggs of such as are ripe. 




Open-air salmon-rearing troughs. These troughs are used at the Craig Brook (Maine) hatchery for rearing 

Atlantic and landlocked salmon. 



THE UNITED STATES BUREAU OF FISHERIES. 



1377 



on tributaries of the Rogue River, Oregon, in addition to several egg-collecting 
stations. The interests of the large salmon fisheries of the Puget Sound region 
are safeguarded by a hatchery on Baker Lake, on the Skagit River, Washington, 
with an important auxiliary at Birdsview. The two latest additions to the 
western salmon hatcheries are at Yes Bay and Afognak, in Alaska, at which 
points immense numbers of blueback or sockeye salmon are now being put forth. 
A significant feature of artificial propagation on the Pacific seaboard is that in 
the Columbia basin the hatching of the acclimatized shad has begun on a small 
scale, and in the Sacramento basin the cultivation of the acclimatized striped 
bass has commenced under conditions which indicate that more eggs of this 
species may be obtained in California than in any of the States to which the 
fish is native. 

Hatcheries on the Pacific Coast Streams and Lakes. 



Fishes handled. 



Baird, Sacramento River, Cal 

Battle Creek, Cal.<* 

Bouldin Island, Cal 

Mill Creek, Cal.o 

Yreka, Sacramento River, Cal. 6 

Baker Lake, Wash 

Birdsview, Wash 

Oregon City, Willamette River, Oreg 

Big White Salmon, Columbia River, Wash 

Eagle and Tanner creeks, Columbia River, 
Oreg. a 

Eagle Creek, Clackamas River, Oreg. 6 

Little White Salmon, Columbia River, Wash . _ 
Rogue River, Oreg 

Applegate Creek, Oreg. 6 

Findley Eddy, Rogue River, Oreg 

Illinois River, Rogue River, Oreg 

Willamette Falls, Willamette River, Oreg 

Yes Bay, Yes Lake, Alaska 

Afognak, Afognak Island, Alaska 



silver salmon, steelhead 



Chinook salmon. 

Chinook salmon. 

Striped bass. 

Chinook salmon. 

Rainbow trout. 

Chinook salmon, blueback salmon, hump- 
back salmon, silver salmon. 

Chinook salmon, blueback salmon, hump- 
back salmon, silver salmon, steelhead 
trout. 

Chinook salmon 
trout, etc. 

Chinook salmon. 

Chinook salmon. 

Steelhead trout. 
Chinook salmon. 
Chinook salmon, steelhead trout, silver 

salmon. 
Chinook salmon, steelhead trout, silver 

salmon. 
Chinook salmon, silver salmon. 
Chinook salmon, steelhead trout. 
Shad. 

Blueback salmon. 
Blueback salmon. 



a Stations where eggs are collected and eyed. 



b Collecting stations. 



The hatcheries in the interior regions constitute the most numerous class, 
and their output reaches the largest number of people. Their operations are 
addressed chiefly to the so-called "game" fishes, which, while caught mostly by 
anglers, nevertheless constitute an important element of the food supply. At 
these stations large numbers of fish are reared to the fingerling or yearling sizes 
before being released ; for which purpose more or less extensive pond areas are 
required. 



1378 



BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF FISHERIES. 



A peculiar kind of station which is included in this general class is that 
devoted to the collection of fishes of various kinds obtained from the overflows 
in the upper Mississippi Valley. In the lowlands along the streams in this 
region the spring floods receding leave disconnected sloughs and pools, which 
either become dry during the summer or, if they remain until the winter, freeze 
solid, and the immense numbers of bass, crappy, and other desirable species 
therein are lost in the ordinary course of events. By seining these waters the 
Bureau obtains large numbers of fish that would otherwise perish, returning 
some of them to their native streams and distributing others to adjacent waters. 
In the autumn of 1908 six cars were employed in moving the fishes thus rescued. 

The following table, giving the interior fish-cultural stations and their auxil- 
iaries, shows that in 1908 there were operated 23 of these stations and substa- 
tions where hatching operations were conducted and 21 others where eggs or 
fish were simply collected : 

Hatcheries in Interior States. 



Location. 


Fishes handled. 


Bozeman, Mont 


Brook trout, rainbow trout, black-spotted trout, 
golden trout, steelhead trout, landlocked salmon. 

Grayling. 

Black basses, sunfishes, rock bass, catfish, etc. 

Black basses, sunfishes, rock bass, yellow perch, 
rainbow and brook trouts, catfish, and minor 
species. 

Landlocked salmon, brook trout. 

Landlocked salmon, brook trout. 

Landlocked salmon, brook trout. 

Rainbow trout, golden trout, black-spotted trout, 
brook trout, landlocked salmon, grayling. 

Rainbow trout. 

Brook trout. 

Brook trout. 

Brook trout. 

Brook trout. 

Black-spotted trout. 

Black-spotted trout, rainbow trout, brook trout. 

Brook trout. 

Brook trout, rainbow trout. 

Brook trout. 

Brook trout. 

Brook trout. 

Black basses, rock bass. 

Black basses, crappies, sunfishes, rock bass, pike 
perch, yellow perch, brook trout, lake trout, rain- 
bow trout, black-spotted trout, catfish. 

Large-mouth black bass, crappies, sunfishes, yellow 
perch, fresh-water drum, buffalo-fish, catfish. 

Large-mouth black bass, crappies, sunfishes, rock 
bass, yellow perch, white bass, pike, buffalo-fish, 
catfish. 

Large-mouth black bass, crappies, sunfishes, yellow 
perch, drum, pike, buffalo-fish, catfish. 


Redrock, Mont 


Bullochville, Ga. __ 


Erwin, Tenn_ _ _ _ . 




Branch Pond, Me. a . 


Grand Lake Stream, Me_ 

Leadville, Colo 

Cheesman Lake, Colo.® .. 

Darrah, Colo.° _ . 

Edith Lake, Colo.°_. . _____ 


Eldora Lake, Colo. a 

Englebrecht Lake, Colo. a _ - 


Grand Lake, Colo 

Grand Mesa Lakes, Colo_ -- 


Musgrove Lake, Colo. a __ 


Ridgway Lake, Colo. a __ _ 

Twin Lakes, Colo.° 


Wellington Lake, Colo.°__ 


Zoebles Lake, Colo. a 


Mammoth Spring, Ark _ _ _ 


Manchester, Iowa _ 


Bellevue, Iowa & ■ 


La Crosse, Wis.* __ 


North McGregor, Iowa & 





a Stations for the collection of eggs. 

& Stations for the rescue of young and adult 6shes from overflowed lands of Mississippi River and tributaries. 



Bul. U. S. B. F., 1908. 



Plate CXLVII. 




Artificial spawning pond and raceway, used in culture of rainbow trout at the Wytheville (Virginia) station. 




Interior of a typical trout hatchery. 



THE UNITED STATES BUREAU OF FISHERIES. 
Hatcheries in Interior States— Continued. 



1379 



Location. 


Fishes handled. 


Nashua, N. H 


Lake trout, brook trout, Sunapee trout, rainbow 
trout, hybrid trout, landlocked salmon, chinook 
salmon, small-mouth black bass. 

Brook trout. 

Brook trout, Sunapee trout. 

Black basses, crappies, sunfishes, rock bass, rain- 
bow trout. 

Brook trout, Loch Leven trout, steelhead trout, 
small-mouth black bass, and minor species. 

Pike perch, black bass, and minor species. 

Large-mouth black bass, crappies, sunfishes, pike 
perch, yellow perch, catfish, and minor species. 

Small-mouth black bass, landlocked salmon, steel- 
head trout, lake trout, brook trout. 

Brook trout. 

Brook trout. 

Brook trout. 

Brook trout. 

Brook trout. 

Pike perch, yellow perch. 

Large-mouth black bass, crappies, sunfishes, rock 
bass, warmouth bass. 

Rainbow trout, black-spotted trout, Loch Leven 
trout, brook trout. 

Brook trout. 

Black-spotted trout. 

Large-mouth black bass, sunfishes, yellow bass. 

Black basses, rainbow trout, black-spotted trout, 
brook trout. 


Cumberland Center, N. H. a 


Lake Sunapee, N. H.& . . 


Northville, Mich. c 


Quincy, 111 - .. 


Meredosia, Ill.d ._ 




Arlington, Vt 


Chittenden, Vtfi 


Darling Pond, Vt.*_ 


Lake Mansfield, Vt.b 


Lake Mitchell, Vt.b __ _ -._ 




San Marcos, Tex . _ 


Spearfish, S. Dak _ . . _. 


Schmidts Lake, S. Dak.&_ . 


Yellowstone Park, Wyo 




White Sulphur Springs, W. Va 





a Stations where eggs are collected and eyed but not hatched. 

b Stations for the collection of eggs. 

c See also in list of Great Lakes hatcheries. 

d Stations for the rescue of young and adult fishes from overflowed lands of Mississippi River and tributaries. 

THE OUTPUT AND ITS DISTRIBUTION. 

The fish-cultural work of the Federal Government has now attained a 
magnitude that can not readily be comprehended, and is increasing at an 
exceedingly rapid rate. Especially marked has been the increase in the hatchery 
product during the past ten years, owing in part to the establishment of new 
stations, in part to the extension of operations at existing stations, and in 
part to greater efficiency of methods and appliances. The work during the 
fiscal year ending June 30, 1908, reached larger proportions than ever before, 
notwithstanding a shrinkage in the operations addressed to several important 
species. In the following summary by species of the eyed eggs, fry, and fin- 
ger lings, yearlings, and adults distributed in the past year it will be noted that 
several fishes included in the list of species cultivated do not appear in this table, 
for the reason that the entire stock was retained for breeding purposes. Orna- 
mental species are likewise omitted from the table. 



I380 BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF FISHERIES. 

Summary of Distribution op Fish and Eggs during the Fiscal Year 1908. 



Species. 


Eggs. 


Fry. 


Fingerlings, 

yearlings, 

and adults. 


Total. 


Catfish . 






277, 601 

350 

40,500 


277, 601 

350 

40, 500 

8o, 076, 600 

523, 746, 000 

15, 990, 000 

95,615,532 

13, 774, 646 

69, 958, 305 

7,185,748 

1,515,871 

3, 797, 250 

2, 109,517 

782, 807 

6,441, 296 

55,oi2 

31,183, 158 

11,251,740 

191,736 

1, 247, 000 

17,550 


Carp 






Buffalo-fish - 






Shad 


760, 000 

139, 266, 000 

12, 790, 000 

68,385,550 

296, 000 

75,000 


79, 316, 600 
384, 480, OOO 

3, 200, 000 

24,998, 185 

13,420,714 

69, 883, 305 

7,185,748 

1, 123, 146 

253, 650 

2,079,514 

441, 281 

4, 230, 540 


Whitefish 




Lake cisco. 




Chinook salmon. 


2,231,797 
57,932 


Silver salmon _ 


Blueback salmon 


Humpback salmon 




Steelhead trout __ 


333, 725 
830, 000 


59, 000 

2, 713, 600 

30, 003 

151, 526 

1,442,376 

55,oi2 

3, 182, 080 
3,471,292 






Landlocked salmon. 


190, 000 
768, 380 ■ 


Black-spotted trouts.. . 


Loch Leven trout 


Lake trout. _ 


2,734,000 
1,473,400 


25,267,078 

6,307,048 

191,736 

1, 047, 000 


Brook trout. 


Sunapee trout _ 


Grayling. 


200, 000 




Pikes 


17,550 
200, 268 

25,090 
1,638 

78, 940 
588, 047 
202, 810 

68, 045 


Crappy and strawberry bass 






Rock bass 






25,090 

1,638 

311,252 

6n,947 
202, 810 


Warmouth bass. 










232,312 
23, 900 


Large-mouth black bass_- 




Sunfishes . 




Pike perch.. 

Yellow perch . 


218, 725, 000 
2 , 080, 000 


i93,438,ooo 

382,576,000 

4, 333, 500 

321,670,000 


412, 163, 000 

384, 724, 043 

4, 333, 500 

327, 410, 000 

500 

26, 000 


Striped bass. . 


White perch . 

White bass . .. 


5, 740,000 




500 

26, ooo. 


Fresh-water drum. 






Cod 


3, 000, 000 


235,365,000 

66, 454, 000 

794, 000 

389, 642, 000 

180, 932, 000 


238, 365, 000 

66, 454, 000 

794, 000 

389, 642, 000 

180,933,011 


Pollock 




Tautog 






Flatfish 






Lobster 




1, on 






Total ._ _ _. __ . 


457,647,055 


2, 398, 886, 257 


14,922,968 2. 871. ak6. ^80 









While the Bureau does not lay undue stress on mere numbers and con- 
siders the vitality of the fish and the conditions under which they are planted 
as of paramount importance, the foregoing figures are certainly very suggestive ; 
and as a further statement of the magnitude of the fish-cultural work it may 
be of interest to record that the aggregate output of the hatcheries from 1872 
to 1908 was about 22,365,200,000, of which about 10,341,700,000 represents the 
work of the past five years. 

The first consideration in the distribution of fishes is to make ample return 
to the waters from which eggs or fish have been collected. The remainder of 
the product is consigned to suitable public or private waters. All applications 



THE UNITED STATES BUREAU OF FISHERIES. 1 38 1 

for fish for private waters and many of those for public streams and lakes are 
transmitted through and receive the indorsement of a United States Senator 
or Representative. The fish are carried to their destination in railroad cars or 
by messengers who accompany the shipments in baggage cars. During the 
fiscal year 1908 the Bureau received 8,284 applications for fish, nearly all for 
game species. The demand, especially for the basses, crappies, and catfishes, 
is greater than can be met with present resources. 

Fishes are distributed at various stages of development, according to the 
species, the numbers in the hatcheries, and the facilities for rearing. The com- 
mercial fishes, hatched in lots of many millions, are necessarily planted as fry. 
It is customary to distribute them just before the umbilical sac is completely 
absorbed. Atlantic salmon, landlocked salmon, and various species of trout, 
in such numbers as the hatchery facilities permit, are reared to fingerlings 
from 1 to 6 inches in length; the remainder are distributed as fry. The basses 
and sunfishes are distributed from the fish-cultural stations and ponds from 
some three weeks after they are hatched until they are several months of age. 
When the last lots are shipped the basses usually range from 4 to 6 inches and 
the sunfishes from 2 to 4 inches in length. The numerous fishes collected in 
overflowed lands — basses, crappies, sunfishes, catfishes, yellow perch, and others — 
are 2 to 6 inches in length when taken and distributed. Eggs are distributed 
only to state hatcheries or to applicants who have hatchery facilities. 

To insure the best results from plants of fish, applicants are required to 
furnish full information as to the physical characters and present inhabitants 
of the waters to be stocked, and the suitable species is determined by the Bureau; 
black bass, for instance, are not furnished for waters stocked with trout, which 
they would destroy, nor are trout consigned to waters already inhabited by 
predaceous fishes. The number of fish allotted to any applicant is governed by 
the available supply of that species, and the area and character of the water in 
question. Some species, merely hatched and not reared, can, as above stated, 
be produced by the hundred million. The allotments of these fry are corre- 
spondingly large. The species reared at the hatcheries or collected from over- 
flows are available in no such numbers, and 200 or 300 fingerlings of these would 
be all that could be supplied as compared with half a million of the other fry. 
Species that are distributed as fry and also reared are of course supplied in much 
larger numbers as fry than as fingerlings. The Bureau attempts only to furnish 
a liberal brood stock, expecting that the fish will be protected until they have 
had time to reproduce. 

Fish are delivered to applicants free of charge at the railroad station 
nearest the point of deposit, and for this purpose is maintained a special car 
and messenger service, which is one of the most important branches of the 
fish-cultural work. In the early days baggage cars were employed, but these 



y 



1382 BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF FISHERIES. 

have now been supplanted by an equipment which not only affords more com- 
fort to fish and attendants, but makes it possible, to transport the fish much 
greater distances and with smaller percentage of loss. The cars, of which there 
are now 6, are of standard size, and are attached to regular express and local 
passenger trains. Each car has 20 or more large water tanks along the sides in 
which to carry fish, compartments holding more than 1,000 gallons of reserve 
water, a boiler room, and a plant for pumping both water and air into the fish 
tanks. There are also an office, kitchen, pantries, refrigerator, and 6 Pullman 
sleeping berths, with other facilities for the convenience and comfort of the crew 
of 5 men (including a cook) who live on the car throughout the year. The Gov- 
ernment furnishes the cook, fuel, and utensils, but the men provide their own 
food. For small shipments of fish and for supplying places off the main railway 
lines messengers detached from the cars carry fish in 10-gallon cans in baggage 
cars. The distributions last year required travel amounting to 83,840 miles 
by the cars, and 263,196 miles by detached messengers — a total of 347,036 
miles — of which 11,826 for cars and 80,816 for messengers were furnished by 
the railroads free of charge. 

POPULARITY OF THE WORK. 

There are few enterprises undertaken by the United States Government 
that are more popular, meet with more general and generous support, and have 
contributed more to the prosperity and happiness of a larger number of people 
than the federal fish-cultural work, evidence of which fact is afforded by the 
attitude and action of Congress. The comparatively large budget for the various 
branches of the Bureau's work is voted each year without any opposition what- 
ever, and the appropriations are increasing yearly. When special needs arise 
and their merit is presented to Congress, special appropriations can usually be 
obtained ; and government fish culture is so popular in the country at large and 
the demand for new hatcheries is so widespread that an extraordinary number 
of hatchery bills have been introduced and favorably considered in recent ses- 
sions of Congress. The Bureau advocates the building of new hatcheries as one 
of the best and most remunerative measures that can possibly be undertaken by 
the Federal Government, but it rarely has to take the initiative, and on several 
occasions the establishment of a hatchery has been proposed by Congress 
before the necessity for it has actually developed. During each of the recent 
sessions of Congress had all the bills providing for new hatcheries become laws 
the Bureau would have been seriously handicapped in designing and construct- 
ing the new buildings and ponds and in supplying competent persons to operate 
them. In the first session of the Sixtieth Congress, which began in December, 
1907, and ended in May, 1908, there were introduced 101 distinct bills, carrying 
an aggregate appropriation of $2,142,000, and providing for 74 hatcheries and 4 
laboratories in 43 States and Territories. 



Bui,. U. S. B. F., 1908. 



Plate CXLA'III. 




A fish transportation car. Sis cars of this kind are in constant use by the Bureau. Live fish are carried safely 
for long distances, and eggs may be incubated while on trains traveling 60 miles an hour. 




Interior view of fish transportation car, showing rows of covered tanks where fish are carried and Pullman 

sleeping berths for attendants. 



THE UNITED STATES BUREAU OF FISHERIES. 1 383 

While the manifold operations of the Bureau touch directly or indirectly 
practically the entire population of the United States, they appeal with special 
force to the commercial fisherman, the fish dealer, the amateur angler, the 
student of aquatic biology and physics, the owner of small ponds, lakes, or 
streams, and the professional cultivator of fishes and other water products. 

SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY. 

The first duties undertaken by the Bureau after its organization involved 
biological investigations, and the operations up to the present time have con- 
tinued to have a distinctly scientific basis. In making his original plans for 
the systematic investigation of the waters of the United States and the bio- 
logical and physical problems they present, Commissioner Baird insisted that 
to study only the food fishes would be of little importance, and that useful con- 
clusions must needs rest upon a broad foundation of investigations purely 
scientific in character. The life history of species of economic value should be 
understood from beginning to end, but no less requisite is it to know the his- 
tories of the animals and plants upon which they feed or upon which their 
food is nourished ; the histories of their enemies and friends and the friends and 
foes of their enemies and friends, as well as the currents, temperatures, and 
other physical phenomena of the waters in relation to migration, reproduction, 
and growth. 

In pursuance of this policy the Bureau has secured the services of many 
prominent men of science, and much of the progress in the artificial propagation 
of fishes, in the investigation of fishery problems, and in the extension of knowl- 
edge of our aquatic resources has been due to men eminent as zoologists who 
have been associated with the work temporarily. Among such men recently 
have been Alexander Agassiz, Hermon C. Bumpus, Gary N. Calkins, Bashford 
Dean, Charles H. Gilbert, Theodore Gill, C. Judson Herrick, Francis H. Herrick, 
David Starr Jordan, A. D. Mead, George H. Parker, Jacob Reighard, Henry B. 
Ward, William M. Wheeler, and Henry V. Wilson. Their services have been 
the services of specialists for particular problems, and through them the Bureau 
has not only been able to give to the public the practical results of applied 
science, but has contributed to pure science valuable knowledge of all forms of 
aquatic life. 

The small permanent staff of the Bureau concerns itself more directly with 
studies of fishes and their environment, with the conservation of diminishing 
commercial species, and the development of new or improved methods of increas- 
ing the supply. Such lines of work are undertaken as the need appears or as 
assistance is asked for, and keep the scientific assistants in the field for extended 
periods each year. The most important work in hand at present concerns 
aquatic products other than fishes — namely, oysters, fresh-water mussels, 



1384 BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF FISHERIES. 

sponges, and the diamond-back terrapin, in all of which cases the problem is to 
find means to offset the results of long-continued overdraft upon the natural 
supply. The Bureau has also the services of a fish pathologist — a position 
specially created by Congress at the solicitation of the commissioner. This 
assistant has devoted most of his time to the study of diseases among fishes at 
the hatcheries of the Government and of various States, and has added greatly 
to the existing knowledge of the causes and prevention of many of the affections 
which often prove so serious in fishes under cultivation. His field includes also 
the investigation of conditions due to pollution of waters. 

Two seaside laboratories are maintained by the Bureau for the prosecution 
of investigations in pure and applied science. One of these is located at Woods 
Hole, Mass., the scene of the first biological work undertaken after the estab- 
lishment of the Bureau. It was built in 1883, and is in conjunction with a 
marine fish hatchery. Here also are extensive wharves, at which the largest 
vessels may lie, and protected harbors for small craft. A large residence build- 
ing at this station was for a number of years occupied as the summer head- 
quarters of the Bureau, the entire executive and office force being transferred 
from Washington. The other laboratory is situated on a small island near Beau- 
fort, N. C, and was constructed in 1901. The land for both of these stations 
was donated by private individuals. In addition to their function in the 
investigations of the Bureau itself, these laboratories are open to the public 
for study and scientific research. Students and professors in colleges and any 
other qualified investigators may have the facilities of the laboratories upon 
request, and these opportunities are largely availed of each year. 

For the survey of offshore fishing grounds, the study of pelagic fishes, and 
the general exploration of the seas, the Bureau has had, since 1882, the steamer 
Albatross, which was specially designed and built for this work, and has con- 
tributed more to the knowledge of the life and physics of the sea than any other 
vessel. The Albatross is a twin-screw iron steamer, rigged as a brigantine, of 
1,074 tons displacement and 384 net tonnage, and was built at a cost of $190,000, 
including original equipment. The complement of officers and men, numbering 
about 80, is furnished by the navy; there is in addition a small civilian staff, 
including a resident naturalist and a fishery expert, to whom the practical work 
of the ship is intrusted. After spending several years in the investigation of 
the fishing grounds of the Atlantic coast of North America, the Albatross was 
dispatched to the Pacific Ocean in 1888, and has since confined her operations 
to those waters. The vessel has made three extended cruises to the southern 
and eastern parts of the Pacific, several cruises to the Hawaiian Islands and 
Japan, and many visits to Alaska, in addition to numerous surveys on the coast 
of the Pacific States, all having for their object the investigation of the physics 
and biology of the regions visited, the determination of their aquatic resources, 



Bul. U. S. B. F., 1908. 



Plate CXUX. 




■3 a 



a; H 

_, bo 
^ a; 
■0*5 
boO 



So 

)-< 

It o 



tax 



J=3 



THE UNITED STATES BUREAU OP FISHERIES. 1 385 

and the study of their fisheries. In 1907 the vessel began a biological survey 
of the waters of the Philippine Archipelago, and is now engaged on that work. 
The deepest sounding made by the Albatross — near the island of Guam — was 
4,813 fathoms; the greatest depth at which the vessel found life was 4,173 
fathoms; the greatest known ocean depth is 5,269 fathoms, near Guam, ascer- 
tained by the U. S. S. Nero while using Albatross apparatus. 

Work similar to that done by the Albatross is conducted by the steamer 
Fish Hawk on the Atlantic coast. This vessel, built for the Bureau in the 
winter of 1879-80, is of 441 gross tons burden, and has a naval crew of 45 men; 
it is equipped for sounding and dredging, and has recently been employed 
chiefly in the exploration of the coastal waters and inshore fishing grounds of 
New England while attached to the laboratory at Woods Hole. The vessel is 
convertible into a hatchery, and has been engaged in the hatching of shad and 
other fishes along the entire coast from Maine to Texas. 

The Bureau's large collections of natural-history specimens are deposited 
in the United States National Museum. The duplicates, however, are not 
retained by that institution, but are distributed upon request to public schools 
and colleges. In this way hundreds of thousands of specimens representing 
all groups of aquatic animals have been supplied for educational purposes. 

STATISTICS AND METHODS OF THE FISHERIES. 

The first duty to which the Bureau of Fisheries was assigned, namely, the 
investigation of the reported decrease of food fishes in New England, necessarily 
involved the collection of statistics of production, personnel, and capital. 
Since that time this branch of the work has been conducted without interrup- 
tion, and in it have naturally been included the various other subjects affecting 
the economic and commercial aspects of the fisheries. Among its functions 
are (1) a general survey of the commercial fisheries of the country; (2) a study 
of the fishery grounds with reference to their extent, resources, yield, and con- 
dition; (3) a study of the vessels and boats employed in the fisheries, with 
special reference to their improvement; (4) a determination of the utility and 
effect of the apparatus of capture employed in each fishery; (5) a study of the 
methods of fishing, for the special purpose of suggesting improvements or of 
discovering the use of unprofitable or unnecessarily destructive methods ; (6) an 
inquiry into the methods of utilizing fishery products, the means and methods 
of transportation, and the extent and condition of the wholesale trade; (7) a 
census of the fishing population, their economic and hygienic condition, nativity, 
and citizenship ; (8) a study of international questions affecting the fisheries ; (9) 
the prosecution of inquiries regarding the fishing apparatus and methods of 
foreign countries. 



1386 



BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF FISHERIES. 



The collection of statistics of the commercial fisheries and the industries 
dependent thereon constitutes the major part of this work. The information 
is required in great detail, and is obtained by the personal inquiries of a small 
corps of agents, who visit all the fishing communities and interview fishermen, 
fish dealers, vessel owners, factory proprietors, and others. While the Bureau 
is not authorized by law to enforce demands for data, it very rarely happens 
that information is refused; on the contrary, the objects and value of the work 
being now well understood, many thousands of fishermen keep accurate records 
for the special use of the Bureau, and dealers, transportation companies, pre- 
parators, etc., permit free access to their books. 

The relatively small force available for the collection of statistics, the magni- 
tude of the territory to be covered, and the extent of the fisheries prevent the 
canvass of more than one section of the country during one season ; and it has 
been found impossible to cover the entire coastwise and interior fisheries oftener 
than once in four or five years. Herewith are the latest available statistics 
gathered by the Bureau for the general fishing industry. These figures show 
that 219,534 persons were engaged in the fisheries, $94,254,839 were invested 
in vessels, boats, apparatus, and other property, and the products had a value 
of $61,047,909: 

Statement of the Persons Engaged and the Capital Invested in the Fisheries of the 

United States. 



Atlantic and Gulf States. 



Value. 



Pacific Coast States and Alaska. 



Number. 



Value. 



Persons employed 

Vessels fishing . 

Tonnage 

Outfit 

Vessels transporting 

Tonnage 

Outfit 

Boats 

Seines 

Gill nets and trammel nets 

Pound nets, trap nets, and weirs 

Fyke nets 

Beam trawls and paranzellas 

Wheels and slides 

Eel and lobster pots . 

Dredges, tongs, rakes, scrapes, etc__ 

Lines 

Other apparatus 

Shore and accessory property 

Cash capital 



Total . 



161,923 

4.584 

85,432 



1,686 
29. 737 



61, 489 

3.888 

143.824 

7,384 

I9.°33 

66 

37 
228,086 



170,256 



3,006,425 
1,847,469 



295.257 

3.981,761 

534, 227 

782,338 

1,540,835 

94, 180 

1, 696 

775 

248, 974 

411, 424 

347,079 

55,347 

20,571, 131 

15,013,676 



56,902,850 



32,410 

121 

8,250 



334 
62, 255 



10, 155 

772 

8,611 

680 

446 

4i 

49 



-i, 017 



289, 897 
2, 771, 022 



68,055 

1,528,911 

282, 244 

1,095, 282 

i,444,5io 

4, 610 

6,37i 
168, 000 



7, 131 

44,42i 

45, 075 

10,473,781 

7, 205, 650 



26,055,977 



Bul. U. S. B. F., 1 90S. 



Platr CL. 




Trial fishing on the Albatross. This experimental catch of cod and halibut was taken in twenty 
minutes by the Albatross while exploring a new "bank " off the coast of Alaska. (See p. 13S4.) 










I 1 M IJ, i- i, t -..— 





.Iarine biological laboratory at Beaufort, X. C. This station, built in 1901, is favorably located for 
the study of the aquatic fauna of the southeast coast. The laboratory building- is 174 feet long 
and 42 feet wide in the main portion, has a large museum and aquaria", and accommodates about 
30 workers. Adjoining the laboratory building are a power plant and a mess house and kitchen. 
(See p. 13S4.) 



THE UNITED STATES BUREAU OF FISHERIES. 



1387 



Statement of the Persons Engaged and the Capital Invested in the Fisheries of the 

United States — Continued. 



Persons employed 

Vessels fishing 

Tonnage 

Outfit 

Vessels transporting 

Tonnage 

Outfit 

Boats 

Seines 

Gill nets and trammel nets 

Pound nets, trap nets, and weirs. _ 

Fyke nets 

Beam trawls and paranzellas 

Wheels and slides 

Eel and lobster pots 

Dredges, tongs, rakes, scrapes, etc. 

Lines 

Other apparatus 

Shore and accessory property 

Cash capital 



Total. 



Great Lakes and interior waters. 



Totad. 



Number. 



194 
3,506 



18 
500 



12, 156 

992 

I02, 604 

4,848 

40, 724 



$634, 45O 



147,402 
69, 4OO 



8,154 
529,766 
76, 6l2 
657, 804 
617, 063 
261,379 



480 



13, 683 

24, 994 

16,215 

4, 809, 022 

3,429,588 



11, 296, 012 



219,534 

4,899 

97, 188 



2,038 

92,492 



83, 800 
5,652 

255,039 

12, 912 

60, 203 

107 

90 

228,086 



.425,723 



3,443,724 
4,687,891 



37L466 
6, 040, 438 

893, 083 
2,535,424 
3, 602, 408 

360, 169 
8,067 

169, 2 55 
248, 974 
432, 238 
416, 494 
116,637 

35, 853, 934 
25,648,914 



94, 254, 839 



Note. — The years to which these figures pertain are 1905 for New England, 1904 for the Middle Atlantic States 
1902 for the South Atlantic and Gulf States. 1904 for the Pacific States, 1907 for Alaska, 1903 for all interior waters. 



Statement of the Products of the Fisheries of the United States. 



Product. 


Atlantic and Gulf States. 


Pacific States and Alaska. 


Pounds. 


Value. 


Pounds. 


Value. 


Fishes: 

Alewives _ _ 


52,061,580 

35, 435 

1, 201, 135 

16,575,661 

I, 019, 032 

3, 006, 610 

4, 184, 363 

5,252,858 

77,498,674 

253,506 

6,910,903 

9,079, 866 

5,550 

4, 063, 230 

3, 636, 964 

9, 676, 172 

1, 328, 271 

77.065,441 

35,928,627 

3.715.776 

83, 390, 554 

16,323,612 

562,427,449 


$473,811 

I, 2 53 

90, 956 

781, 802 

41, 818 

26,556 

138,761 

168, 102 

2, IOI, 119 

7. 154 

138,931 

139,964 

131 

I09, 055 

212, l60 

290, l86 

78,778 

1,258,763 

419, 384 

237, 876 

692, 854 

I, 106,741 
1, 452, 062 






Barracudas 


2, 159, 282 
93.500 


$51, 820 


Black basses . 


2, 9IO 


Bluefish 


Bonito . . _ . 


212, 062 


3,075 


Buffalofishes 


Butterfish . ... .. 






Catfishes 


923, 144 

7, 694, 944 


27, 292 

193,966 


Cods . 


Crappy and strawberry bass . . 
Croaker. _ _ _ 


121,340 


3, 145 


Cusk 


Drum, fresh -water _ _ _ 






Drum, salt-water ... 






Eels.. 






Flounders .... 


8,418, 145 
90, 374 


155,512 
1,607 


German carp 


Haddock. .... 


Hakes _ 






Halibut __ _ ... _ 


12,091, 000 

4,455,729 

134,992 


358, 930 

35,407 

3,666 


Herrings . 


Mackerel _ 


Menhaden _ _ . . 



1388 BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF FISHERIES. 

Statement of the Products of the Fisheries of the United States — Continued. 



Product 



Fishes — Continued. 

Mullets 

Perch, white 

Perch, yellow 

Pike perches 

Pike and pickerel 

Pollock 

Pompano 

Rockfishes 

Salmons 

Scup 

Sea bass 

Shads 

Sheepshead 

Silver hake 

Smelts 

Snapper, red 

Snappers, other 

Spanish mackerel 

Spot 

Squeteagues 

Striped bass 

Sturgeons 

Suckers 

Sunfishes 

Swordfish 

Tautog 

Trouts 

Whiting and kingfish 

Other fishes 

Fish oil 

Mollusks: 

Abalone 

Clams, hard-shell 

Clams, soft-shell and other __ 
Cockles, winkles, conchs, etc_ 

Mussels 

Oysters 

Oyster and other shells 

Scallops 

Squid 

Crustaceans: 

Crabs 

Crawfish 

King crabs 

Lobster 

Shrimp and prawn 

Shrimp shells 

Spiny lobsters 

Reptiles and batrachians: 

Alligator hides 

Frogs 

Terrapins and turtles 

Mammals: 

Fur-seal pelts 

Hair-seal pelts 

Otter pelts 

Whalebone 

Whale oil 



Atlantic and Gulf States. 



41 
2 



29 



734. 178 
674, 763 
587.885 

31 1 2 °° 
154.359 
033. 093 
876, 305 



9 

4; 

28. 

2 

5; 



43; 
2 
I 



86, 368 
216, 731 
282,313 
065, 130 
634, 046 

549. 935 
628, 860 

763, 653 
401,349 
965,381 
023,476 
794. 980 
601,354 
475.925 
451.426 

751.655 
3".369 
847. 756 



178,650 

245,417 
26,325 



1, 

215, 

19, 

1, 

1, 

34, 

2, 
11. 
16, 



193. 844 
130,430 
93. 734 
551.850 
121, 914 

975. "5 
586, 151 

"9,369 

'37,937 
16, 000 
303, 000 
898, 136 
186, 905 



55, 664 

349, 927 
9, 210 

856, 936 



3.283 

55. 950 

,933,554 



$709, 
160, 

25. 

1, 

10, 

305, 

56, 



067 
875 
547 
505 
045 
436 
905 



20 

250 

183 

1,688 

68 

37 

69 

418 

11 

160 

65 

1,233 

259 

137 

17 

18 

205 

28 



161 
320 
219 
352 
060 
866 
710 
360 
419 
270 
759 
959 
926 

3ii 

364 
757 
567 



56, 
210, 



107 
136 
856 



1, 320, 364 

543, 722 

i3,5»o 

6,705 

17,417,581 

20, 488 

297, 658 

17,307 

723, 845 

615 

8,903 

1,364,721 

288, 344 



3,282 

40, 779 

1,289 

94, 586 



18,367 
193.037 
246, 565 



Pacific States and Alaska 



Pounds. 



12,952 



33, 850 

I, 896, 467 

267,389,335 



489, 505 



2, 762, 202 



708, 465 



988,524 

1,570,404 

137,981 



",343 



3,089, 670 



3, 748, 766 
718,837 

824, 948 
871,008 
308, 080 



28,215 

, 665, 696 

8,730 



251,360 

6, 081, 606 
187, 200 



i,3",750 

950, 000 

1, 078, 065 



28, 095 

92, 364 

75,417 

3,562 

120, 191 

408, 419 



Value 



$423 



4,502 

63, 409 

12,589.958 



13, H6 



79.973 



11,704 



3L548 

92, 116 

4.271 



554 



129,253 



74, 186 
19, 191 

9, 155 
65,078 
30, 280 



1.764 

1,031,523 

218 



10, 054 

181, 904 
12, 480 



93,544 

4,390 

43, 406 



2,616 

484, 649 
13,354 
16, 703 

529.614 
20, 796 



THE UNITED STATES BUREAU OF FISHERIES. 1 389 

Statement of the Products of the Fisheries of the United States — Continued. 



Product. 



Mammals — Continued. 

Ambergris 

Sea-elephant oil 

Sea -elephant skins. 

Walrus products 

Minor products 

Miscellaneous: 

Sponges 

Seaweeds 

All other products . 

Total 



Atlantic and Gulf States. 



Pounds. 



94 

590, 625 
5,000 



346, 889 

841, 000 

2, 886, 040 



1,512,283,708 39,482,010 



$16, 900 

25, 000 

600 



364.422 
34. 120 
39.926 



Pacific States and Alaska. 



8, 749 

7.575 



59.320 
1, 198,589 



K, 77 1 
7.791 



2, 267 
34. 380 



336,521,752 16,553.301 



Fishes: 

Alewives 

Barracudas 

Black basses 

Bluefish 

Bonito 

Buffalofishes 

Butterfish 

Catfishes 

Cods 

Crappy and strawberry bass_ 

Croaker 

Cusk 

Drum, fresh-water 

Drum, salt-water 

Eels 

Flounders 

German carp 

Haddock 

Hakes 

Halibut 

Herrings 

Herring, lake 

Mackerel 

Menhaden 

Mullets : 

Paddlefish 

Perch, white 

Perch, yellow 

Pike perches 

Pike and pickerel 

Pollock 

Pompano 

Rockfishes 

Salmons 

Scup 

Sea bass 

Shads 

Sheepshead 

Silver hake 



Great Lakes and interior waters. 



Pounds. 



644, 936 



",527,531 
6,542,001 
I, 143, 800 



3, 507, 33i 

178,952 

17,524, 118 



32, 177,689 



1,432,257 



6,492,885 

10, 868, 404 

1, 296, 911 



125,858 
~~8,~7 5 o 



Value. 



56, 605 



313,841 
336, 135 



54, °34 



87,810 
II, 409 

361, 870 



816, 046 



53,565 



156,727 

456, 470 

69, 677 



5,629 
""875 



Total. 



Pounds. 



52, 061, 580 
2, 194,717 
1,939,571 

16,575,661 
I, 231,094 

14, 534, 141 
4, 184, 363 

12, 718, 003 
85, 193,618 

1, 397, 306 
7, 032, 243 
9, 079, 866 
3,512,881 

4, 063, 230 
3,815,916 

18,094,317 
18,942,763 
77,065,441 
35,928,627 

15, 806, 776 
87, 846, 283 
32, 177,689 

16, 458, 604 
562,427,449 

41,747, 130 
1,432,257 

2, 674, 763 
7, 080, 770 

10, 899, 604 
1,451,270 

29,033,093 

910, 155 

1, 896, 467 

267, 601, 561 

9, 216,731 

4,282,313 

28,563,385 

2,634,046 

5, 549, 935 



Value. 



$473,811 
53, 073 
150,471 
781,802 
44,893 
34o, 397 
138,761 

531,529 

2,295,085 

61, 188 

142,076 

139, 964 
87,941 

109, 055 
223, 569 
445, 698 
442, 255 
1,258,763 

419,384 

596, 806 

728,261 

816, 046 

1, no, 407 

1, 452,062 

709, 49° 

53, 565 

160, 875 

182,274 

457,975 
79, 722 

305,436 

61, 407 

63, 409 

12,615, 748 

250, 320 

183, 216 

1, 702, 373 

68, 060 

37,866 



1390 BULLETIN OP THE BUREAU OF FISHERIES. 

Statement of the Products op the Fisheries of the United States — Continued. 



Great Lakes and interior waters. 



Value. 



Total. 



Pounds. 



Value. 



Fishes — Continued 

Smelts 

Snapper, red ; _ _ 

Snappers, other 

Spanish mackerel 

Spot 

Squeteagues 

Striped bass 

Sturgeons 

Suckers 

Sunfishes 

Swordfish 

Tautog 

Trouts 

Whitefish 

Whiting and kingfish 

Other fishes 

Fish oil 

Mollusks: 

Abalone 

Clams, hard-shell 

Clams, soft -shell and other. _ 
Cockles, winkles, conchs, etc. 

Mussels 

Mussel shells 

Oysters 

Oyster and other shells 

Scallops 

Sq uid 

Crustaceans: 

Crabs 

Crawfish 

King crabs 

Lobster 

Shrimp and prawn 

Shrimp shells 

Spiny lobsters 

Reptiles and batrachians: 

Alligator hides 

Frogs 

Terrapins and turtles 

Mammals: 

Fur-seal pelts 

Hair-seal pelts 

Otter pelts 

Whalebone 

Whale oil __ 

Ambergris 

Sea-elephant oil 

Sea-elephant skins 

Walrus products 

Minor products 

Miscellaneous: 

Sponges 

Seaweeds 

All other products 



Total. 



23, 600 



i,647. 306 
9,087, 213 
1,325.521 



17, 069, 284 
7, 728, 761 



1,657,805 



51,856,430 



244, 464 



190, 884 



336, 049 
524, 283 



16 



24, 200 



185, 187,239 



$2, 720 



9i,372 

178, 940 

33, 295 



951, 864 
350, 186 



29,513 



530, 098 



7,897 



11,808 



24, 788 
17, 292 



40 



2, 092 



3,414,662 

13, 763, 653 

4°i, 349 

3, 673, 846 

2,023,476 

44, 783, 504 
4,i7i,758 
3, 261, 212 
9, 538, 639 
2, 088, 519 
3,3",369 
847, 756 

20, 158, 954 
7, 728, 761 
1, 178, 650 

13,651,988 
745, 162 

824, 948 
9, 064, 852 
8,438,510 

93, 734 

1, 580, 065 

51,856,430 

217, 787, 610 

19, 983, 845 
1, 586, 151 

1, 370, 729 



40, 

2, 
11, 
17, 



219, 
447, 
3°3, 



95°, 
, 133, 

349, 

345, 

,4°9, 

92, 

75, 

6, 

176, 

,34i, 

59°, 

5, 



543 
664 
000 
136 
539 
000 

729 

927 
259 
314 

364 
417 
861 

141 
973 
94 
625 
000 
749 
575 



346, 

900, 

, 108, 



320 
829 



5,012,598 



2,033,992,699 



$152,403 
418, 360 

11,419 

i7i,974 

65, 759 

1, 265, 507 

352,042 

232,954 
196, 304 

52, 606 
205, 567 

28, 298 

1, 081, 117 

350, 186 

56, 107 
313,835 

20, 047 

9, 155 

1,385,442 

574, 002 

13,510 

8,469 

530, 098 

18, 449, 104 

20, 706 

297, 658 

27,361 

905, 749 

20, 992 

8,903 

1,364,721 

393, 696 

4,390 

46, 688 

40, 779 

26, 077 

114,494 

484, 649 
13, 354 

35, IIQ 
722,651 
267, 361 

16, 900 

25, 000 

600 

5,771 

7,79i 

364, 422 

36, 387 
76, 398 



61, 047, 909 



THE UNITED STATES BUREAU OF FISHERIES. 



1391 



Supplementary Table Showing Certain of the Above Products in Bushels, Gallons, and 

Number. 



Product. 



Quantity. 



Clams, hard-shell bushels 

Clams, soft -shell and other do _ _ 

Mussels do__ 

Oysters do__ 

Oyster and other shells 3 do__ 

Scallops do _ _ 

Cockles and winkles do_ _ 

Oil: 

Fish gallons 

Whale do__ 

Sea -elephant do__ 

Fur-seal pelts number 

Alligator hides do_ _ 

Otter Skins , do _ _ 



3i 



, i33» 106 
843.851 
48, 946 
112,515 
33 2 .9io 
264, 358 
9, 400 

99. 375 
578, 93° 
78,750 
15. 394 
70, 410 

4.537 



o Exclusive of tortoise and mussel shells. 

The two most important fishing ports on the Atlantic coast are Boston 
and Gloucester, from which places upward of 435 vessels, of 24,000 net tonnage, 
valued at $2,150,000 and carrying over 6,000 men, are employed in the fisheries. 
Most of the vessels are schooner rigged, and engaged in fishing on the high seas 
or on the "banks" lying off the United States and the British provinces. In 
the year 1907 about 200,000,000 pounds of fish, having a first value of over 
$5,250,000, were landed in the ports named. For the purpose of keeping in 
close touch with the condition and extent of these fisheries, which afford a good 
criterion of the New England fisheries as a whole, two local agents are employed 
to collect daily statistics of receipts, and this information is incorporated into 
a special bulletin issued monthly and widely distributed to the trade. It is the 
expectation that this local statistical service will be extended to other important 
centers. 

The Bureau has conducted several investigations of the fisheries of the 
Hawaiian Islands and Porto Rico, and is now engaged in a study of the fisheries 
of the Philippine Islands. The latest information obtained gives the following 
figures for Hawaii and Porto Rico, for the Philippines no complete data are 
available, but it is estimated that the industry yields annually products to the 
value of $10,000,000 to $15,000,000. 



Item. 



Persons engaged in fishing 

Value of vessels, boats, and apparatus employed 

Quantity of catch (pounds) 

Value of catch 




Porto Rico 
(1902). 



748 

$35. 826 

2, 169, 770 

$106, 022 



I39 2 BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF FISHERIES. 

ALASKA SALMON-INSPECTION SERVICE. 

The fishing interests in Alaska, representing an investment of $9,000,000 
and yielding last year a product valued at more than $10,000,000, have received 
especial attention from the Government ever since the Territory was acquired, in 
1867. The seal fisheries, at first considered the most valuable sources of rev- 
enue, were at once placed under protective legislation. Later there appeared 
a similar need of regulation of the salmon fisheries, which have now come to 
support industries many times more valuable than the seal fisheries and stand- 
ing in large proportion to the total fishing interests of the whole United States. 
The Alaska salmon-inspection service has thus grown to be one of the most 
important branches of Government fishery work, and it is one of the few 
instances where the Government has assumed legislative powers over fishing. 

Supervision of the salmon fisheries, as of the seal, was at first given to the 
Treasury Department, and it remained under that jurisdiction until 1903, when 
it was transferred to the Department of Commerce and Labor, by which it is 
administered through the Bureau of Fisheries. There are three agents in this 
field, whose duty it is to inquire into the methods by which fish are caught, 
prepared, and marketed, and into the conditions of supply, to report thereon 
and recommend legislation, and to enforce existing laws. For these purposes 
the entire region is canvassed every year, the agents remaining on the ground 
throughout the fishing season, from June to September. 

The protection of the Alaska salmon fisheries has been a difficult problem. 
The unheard-of magnitude of the resources invited a corresponding recklessness 
and improvidence. As the canning industry developed, every device that could 
be used for wholesale capture of fish was put into operation, and gradually all 
of the favorite streams of the salmon became so blocked with seines, gill nets, 
traps, and barricades that but a small proportion of the fish could find passage 
to the spawning grounds, and the future supply was thus most seriously endan- 
gered. The Alaskan aborigines likewise conducted their fishing in a very destruc- 
tive way, often placing impassable barriers in streams up which salmon were 
running, and, through ignorance or indifference, leaving the obstructions in 
place after the full supply of fish had been secured. It was soon apparent that 
the laws and regulations were inadequate to meet the special conditions prevail- 
ing and were of such a nature as to make their enforcement very difficult. 

In 1903 a special commission was appointed to make exhaustive study of 
the natural history of the salmons of Alaska and to submit recommendations for 
an improved regulation of the fisheries. As a result a new code of laws is now 
in effect and promises to prevent the threatened decline in these enormous indus- 
tries. With increased restrictions as to fishing methods, obstructions in streams, 
close seasons, etc., the Department of Commerce and Labor is empowered to 



But. U. S. B. F., i 



Plate CLJ. 




Alaskan fish traps and runs used by natives 



ly their winter supply of sal mo 




Salmon trap in an Alaskan river. This form of trap is extensively used in the Bristol Bay region, and takes 
immense quantities of salmon for the canneries. The largest traps have leaders more than half a mile 
long, and cost upward of $15,000. 



THE UNITED STATES BUREAU OF FISHERIES. 1 393 

set aside any streams as spawning preserves whenever such course shall be desir- 
able, all fishing in such waters to be prohibited. A license tax is required on 
all salmon products; from the payment of this tax, however, all canning and 
salting establishments are exempted upon condition of their returning young 
salmon to the streams in the ratio of i.ooo fry to every 10 cases of salmon 
canned. Three private hatcheries, representing extensive canning interests, 
were in operation in 1907 and liberated a total of 119,000,000 young fish. The 
Government itself has undertaken extensive hatchery work, having now in oper- 
ation a station at Yes Lake established in 1905 and one at Afognak Bay just 
completed. In the two years of its operations the Yes Bay hatchery has 
produced and liberated over 61,000,000 salmon fry. 

The seal and salmon fisheries have hitherto overshadowed all other aquatic 
resources in Alaska, not only in commercial value but in revenue to the Gov- 
ernment. The rental from the fur-seal islands alone has more than repaid the 
purchase price of the Territory, and the tax derived from the salmon fisheries 
now amounts to about $90,000 a year. Some long-neglected products are gradu- 
ally coming into importance, however, and the cod, halibut, and herring fisheries 
especially have undergone remarkable development in the last few years. 
Since it became a part of the United States, Alaska has yielded fishery products 
amounting in value to $158,000,000, of which about $49,000,000 was derived 
from fur seals, $86,000,000 from salmon, and the remaining $23,000,000 from 
all other aquatic products. The sum paid by the United States to Russia for 
the Territory of Alaska was only $7,200,000. 

RELATIONS WITH THE STATES AND WITH FOREIGN COUNTRIES. 

From the beginning of its career the Bureau has maintained cordial rela- 
tions with the fishery authorities of the various States. The policy has been 
to aid and supplement, never to supplant, the work of the States; and the 
field is so large and the objects in view have such importance and common 
interest that there should never arise cause for unfriendly rivalry. The coop- 
eration in fish-cultural, biological, and fishery work has been extensive. 

Twenty-seven of the States have hatcheries of their own, and to any of 
these the Bureau transfers eggs and fry when they are available and desired. 
This policy is not only an aid to the state work, but facilitates the hatching by 
relieving congestion at the government stations, and it also permits the most 
judicious planting of the fish. The Bureau has in a number of cases taken over 
and operated hatcheries owned by the States, and in others the egg collections 
are made conjointly. In the Pacific salmon work there was for years coopera- 
tion between the California Fish Commission and the Bureau, and much of the 
whitefish and pike perch work on Lake Erie has been done by the Bureau work- 
ing with the States of Ohio and Pennsylvania. 



1394 



BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF FISHERIES. 



In the States that have no means for undertaking fish-cultural work the 
Government is looked to for the stocking of both public and private waters; 
and, for that matter, the Bureau distributes young fish to applicants in all 
States without distinction. In the introduction of nonindigenous fishes, how- 
ever, the Bureau responds to applications only with the approval of state 
authorities. The evil that may result from the indiscriminate planting of new 
fishes, especially the predaceous species, is obvious, but as it is not generally 
recognized by applicants that the popular black basses and trouts, for instance, 
do not dwell together in amity, full precaution is taken to secure requisite 
information before the fish are supplied. 

The extent of government aid to state hatchery work may be judged from 
the following table, showing the numbers of eggs consigned gratis to state fish 
commissions during the year ended June 30, 1908: 

Allotments of Egos to State Fish Commissions, Fiscal Year 1908. 



State and species. 


Number of eggs. 


State and species. 


Number of eggs. 


California : Chinook salmon 


68, 647, 550 

125,000 
50, OOO 

IOO, OOO 

25, OOO, OOO 

IOO, OOO 
700, OOO 

150, OOO 

2, 080, OOO 

15, OOO 

10, OOO 

500, OOO 

43, 000, 000 

IOO, OOO 

50, OOO 

5 , 000, 000 

IOO, OOO 
200, OOO 

IOO, OOO 
504, OOO 

15, OOO, OOO 
20, OOO 


New York — Continued. 


300,000 

a 30, 906, OOO 

a 2, 070, OOO 

I, 485, OOO 


Black-spotted trout . . _ 
Lake trout _ . 


Ohio: 

Whitefish _ 






Illinois: Pike perch _ _ 


Oregon: Chinook salmon _ _ . . 
Pennsylvania : 

Whitefish _ 


Maine : 


b 76, 860, OOO 
10, 720, OOO 

IOO, OOO 

126, 000 


White perch 
Maryland: 

Rainbow trout 




Silver salmon. 

Black-spotted trout 

Lake trout . 




500, OOO 

b 144, 725,000 

50, OOO 

300, OOO 

84, 500 

15,000,000 
50, OOO 

IOO, OOO 


Massachusetts: Rainbow trout. _ 
Michigan: 

Landlocked salmon 


Pike perch . 

Utah: Rainbow trout 
Vermont : 


Pike perch 

Missouri: 




Wisconsin : 

Whitefish 


Grayling .. 


Steelhead trout . 


Rainbow trout 






50, OOO 


Lake trout- _ .. - - . . 


Wyoming : 

Steelhead trout 




20, OOO 


New Hampshire: 


Black-spotted trout 


63, OOO 
50, OOO 
50, OOO 


Lake trout- _ - 


Grayling 

Total ... -. _ 


New York: 

Whitefish-. 




440, 161, 050 


Landlocked salmon 







a The Ohio Fish Commission cooperated by furnishing a vesse 1 and crew, and defrayed the expenses of collecting 
these eggs. 

b The Pennsylvania Fish Commission contributed the cost of collecting these eggs. 

In addition to the eggs distributed as above, 3,500,000 yellow perch fry 
were consigned to Connecticut and 1,475,000 lobster fry to Massachusetts; and 



THE UNITED STATES BUREAU OF FISHERIES. 1 395 

of rainbow trout fingerlings, yearlings, and adults, 44,800 were donated to 
Maryland and 5,000 to Nebraska. 

The oyster-producing States more than any others have asked for the 
assistance of the Bureau's scientific staff. In Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, 
Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Texas extensive surveys have 
been made or are being made, the oyster grounds charted, biological and phys- 
ical conditions studied, and the path to successful cultivation pointed out. In 
North Carolina the declining shad fishery was recently investigated in both its 
natural history and statistical aspects by the Bureau at the request of the state 
authorities. State hatcheries have frequently called for aid in the study and 
treatment of epidemics among the fry and young fish. The results achieved 
in these various instances will be referred to elsewhere. 

International courtesy has prompted the donation of American fish eggs 
to foreign governments, and the hardiness of such eggs and the facility with 
which they may be transported out of water for long distances have resulted 
in the establishment of some of the best of our food and game fishes in distant 
lands. Thus the brook trout and other American salmonoids are now thriving 
in Argentina; the brook trout, the rainbow trout, and the black bass are widely 
distributed in Europe; the rainbow and brook trouts are found in several 
Japanese lakes; and some of the finest trout fishing in the world is afforded 
by the rainbow trout in New Zealand, where also the chinook salmon, the 
blueback salmon, and various other American fishes are now flourishing. Dur- 
ing the past year about 4,000,000 eggs of salmons and trouts were shipped 
abroad. When the Bureau is unable to supply such requests from its own 
stock, it acts as agent in the purchase from private fish-cultural establishments, 
supervising the packing and the transportation to the point of embarkation. 

PUBLICATIONS. 

The 65 large volumes which represent the United States Bureau of Fish- 
eries on library shelves are not the mere routine report or annual statement of 
funds disbursed and duties discharged. The scientific study and the practical 
experiment which are the foundation of the Bureau's work yield results of 
manifold interest and far-reaching significance, and such results are corre- 
spondingly fruitful of discussion. The dissemination of the knowledge they 
afford is, moreover, a recognized function for which the periodical document 
issue is the established medium. The subject-matter of these volumes is thus 
coextensive with the scope of the operations of the Bureau — it is biological, 
fish-cultural, and commercial, treated from standpoints both technical and 
economic. The names of J. A. Allen, Baird, Bean, Bumpus, Dean, Farlow, 
Forbes, Gill, Gilbert, Goode, Jordan, Rathbun, Ryder, Verrill, and numbers 
of other well-known biologists give the publications authority in science; and 



1396 BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF FISHERIES. 

the reports of Baird, again, and the pioneers, Atkins, Clark, Green, Hessel, 
McDonald, and Stone, and their successors, constitute practically a history of 
fish culture in America. The Manual of Fish Culture, first issued in 1897 and 
revised in 1900, is yet the only publication in English covering that subject. 
The seven-volume Fisheries and Fishery Industries of the United States, by 
Goode and his associates — Clark, Collins, Earll, Elliott, McDonald, and True — 
though published about twenty years ago, remains a standard work of reference. 
Of special interest and value during recent years have been the numerous con- 
tributions of Evermann, either alone or in collaboration, on the fishes of Hawaii, 
Porto Rico, the interior and coastal waters of America, etc.; the reports of 
Benedict, Rathbun, and others on crustacean resources, of Herrick on the 
lobster, of Kunz on pearls, of Moore on oysters and oyster culture, of Parker 
and Herrick on the special senses in fishes, and various other papers by regular 
assistants of the Bureau on economic, biological, and fish-cultural subjects. 
In addition to the foregoing, the publications treat of the physical conditions 
in lakes and streams, the methods used in deep-sea investigation, and all forms 
of minute animal and plant life in their relation to fishes — reaching into the 
fields of oceanography, hydrography, geology, and chemistry, as well as biology. 
The Bureau is thus responsible for a literature which no bibliography of natural 
science could omit and which has an educational value and popular interest 
widely acknowledged and availed of. 

For the first ten years of the existence of the Bureau its publications were 
comprised in a series of annual octavo volumes known as the "Commissioner's 
Report." In 1881 another series was begun, likewise of annual issue, and desig- 
nated "Bulletin of the United States Fish Commission." These two series 
endured as instituted until the year 1905, when new legislation brought about a 
change. So far as form is concerned, however, the change affects only the com- 
missioner's report. This report is no longer a bound book containing a detailed 
discussion of the year's work, with special reports appended, but is reduced to a 
brief administrative statement of results, occupying less than 50 octavo pages. 
The special reports formerly published as appendixes and making up the major 
portion of the original volume are now issued as separate, independent pam- 
phlets under distinct title-pages and covers. These papers are, in general, fish 
cultural and economic, being detailed accounts of special investigations or 
experiments briefly noticed in the commissioner's report, and, as a rule, con- 
temporary. The relationship of their subject-matter is recognized in then- 
size and typographical style, which is such as to permit them to be bound, if 
desired, with the commissioner's report to which they pertain. They are 
issued at no fixed intervals, but from time to time, according to quantity and 
character of material and the exigencies of printing, each annual group, however, 
being usually completed within the year the commissioner's report is issued. 



Bul. U. S. B. F., 1908. 



Plate CLII. 




A Penobscot River salmon weir. Large numbers of these traps are set in the Penobscot during the short 
season, and they intercept practically the entire run of salmon. The fish thus caught are the sole source 
of eggs for the hatchery on Craig Brook, a small tributary of the Penobscot. (See p. 1399.) 




Largest seine in the world. This seine, operated for shad and alewives at Stony Point, Virginia, on the Potomac 
River, was the longest net of the kind. The net proper was 9,600 feet in length, and the hauling ropes at 
the ends were 22,400 feet long, giving 32,000 feet as the total sweep of the seine, only one end of which shows 
in the illustration. The seine was hauled by steam power and the labor of 80 men, and was drawn twice 
daily, at ebb tide, throughout the season. As many as 3,600 shad were taken at one haul, and 126,000 in one 
season, and 250,000 alewives were caught at one time. Recently the season's yield of shad fell to 3,000, and 
the fishery was consequently discontinued in 1905 after having been carried on for a century. This seine 
was a source of eggs for the Bureau's shad hatchery on this river. (See p. 1399.) 



THE UNITED STATES BUREAU OP FISHERIES. 1 397 

The bulletin remains as heretofore, composed of papers (chiefly technical) 
upon all phases of aquatic biology studied by the Bureau or its collaborators. 
The volumes are annual, in royal octavo, with continuous pagination and general 
index. The separates are issued at irregular intervals, as are the pamphlets just 
described, and a volume is ordinarily closed within the year following the date 
in its title. 

The publications are distributed gratis to all persons or institutions that 
desire them. A permanent mailing list is maintained, and individual requests 
also are complied with as received. The change affecting the contents of the 
annual report, however, carried with it a new plan in the general distribution 
of documents. The laws establishing the report and bulletin had contemplated 
their issue in the form of annual bound volumes only, though it was possible to 
obtain a small edition of special papers in advance as separates. The separates, 
of course, offered the advantage of promptness in publication, convenience to 
the reader interested in a particular subject, and economy to the Bureau where 
without them it would have been necessary to supply entire volumes to persons 
desiring only a part. Accordingly, when revision of the printing laws made a 
new course possible, the pamphlet form was adopted almost exclusively for 
general distribution, exception being made only in the case of reference libraries, 
government departments, public fishery organizations, institutions of learning, 
etc., for whose purposes the annual bound volumes were better suited. To all 
other addresses on the mailing list and to all subsequent correspondents the 
Bureau forwarded a circular announcement of the change which was to take 
effect, furnishing a classification of subject-matter, and asking to be advised 
what papers would be desired in future. To the extent of the edition provided, 
any or all of the documents published are now supplied in accordance with the 
wishes thus ascertained. The subjects covered in the papers may be classified 
as follows : 

1. Annual report of the commissioner. 

2. Fish culture: 

(a) Methods. 

(b) Distribution of fish and eggs. 

(c) Fish diseases and parasites. 

3. Aquatic biology: 

(a) Economic investigations. 

(6) Explorations and surveys, the methods, apparatus, etc. 

(c) Descriptions of species and faunal lists. 

(d) Morphological, physiological, and pathological studies. 

4. Commercial fisheries and related industries. 

For convenience of reference all publications of the Bureau are given a 
serial number, document 645 being the last issued. A list of titles of all avail- 
able documents, arranged by numbers and indexed by subjects, is kept up to 



1398 BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF FISHERIES. 

date and can be had upon request. Most of the earlier numbers are now out of 
print, some of the most valuable works unfortunately being no longer obtain- 
able from any source unless from secondhand-book dealers. Of some important 
recent works an edition of 2,000 was exhausted within a year, and several docu- 
ments of particular public interest have run through eight or ten editions. It 
is now possible to supply only a few odd back volumes and some 300 different 
pamphlets. 

The permanent mailing list, which is steadily growing, includes at present 
some 1,500 addresses, representing various national and state government 
departments, fishery organizations and biological societies, public libraries and 
museums, colleges, newspapers and magazines, numerous fish culturists, edu- 
cators, students, sportsmen, and other persons with related interests. It is in 
the daily requests for particular papers, however, that the public interest in 
the Bureau's work is most manifest. During the past year, which has shown 
an especially marked increase in this respect, 25,423 documents were sent out 
in response to special requests. 

As already stated, the Bureau distributes its publications free upon request. 
The Commissioner's Annual Report and the Bulletin (but not the independent 
pamphlet reports) can also be obtained free from Members of Congress, each 
United States Senator and Representative receiving a quota from the edition 
provided for this purpose. The bulletin in this edition is the cloth-bound vol- 
ume, delivered annually. All of the documents can be purchased in pamphlet 
form from the Superintendent of Documents, Government Printing Office, 
Washington, D. C, at a price representing 10 per cent more than actual cost. 

SOME RESULTS OF THE WORK. 
FISH CULTURE. 

Much evidence can be adduced to show that the fish-cultural operations of 
the General Government are of direct financial benefit to the country at large. 
The results in the case of some species have been so striking and so widespread 
that it would be almost as supererogatory to refer to them as to discuss the 
utility of agriculture; in the case of other species there can be no doubt of the 
value of the work, although it may be possible but occasionally to distinguish 
the effects of human intervention on the fish supply from the effects of natural 
causes. The outcome of the Bureau's efforts to increase the food supply is 
naturally most evident in the case of small streams, lakes, and ponds, of which 
thousands have been successfully stocked with the most desirable food and 
game species. It is not necessary to refer further to this work, but a few of the 
important results of operations in public waters may appropriately be mentioned. 

The leading river fish of the eastern seaboard is the shad. No other 
anadromous species has been more extensively cultivated and none is now so 



THE UNITED STATES BUREAU OF FISHERIES. 1 399 

dependent on artificial measures for its perpetuation. Inasmuch as the prin- 
cipal fisheries are in interstate or coastal waters and the movements of the fish 
from the high seas to our rivers and back to the high seas place it beyond the 
claim to ownership which might be urged by the various States were the shad a 
permanent resident within their jurisdiction, it seemed especially desirable and 
necessary that this species should be fostered by the General Government for 
the benefit of the entire country. For this reason, and owing to a serious decline 
that had already set in, the shad was one of the first species whose artificial 
propagation was taken up by the Bureau, and its cultivation is to-day a leading 
factor in fishery work, almost every large stream having been the site of hatching 
operations. The extent of the work may be gauged when it is stated that nearly 
3,000 millions of young shad have been planted by the Bureau in coastal streams, 
and a very significant point is that the eggs from which these fish were hatched 
were taken from fish that had been caught for market, and hence would have 
been totally lost if the Bureau had not collected them from the fishermen. 

The great multiplication of all kinds of fishing appliances on the coast, in 
the bays, in the estuaries, and along the courses of the rivers, resulted in the 
capture of a very large part of the run each season before the shad reached the 
spawning grounds, and hence the natural increase was seriously curtailed, and, 
in some streams, almost entirely prevented. Yet the shad catch increased, and 
for many years the fishery prospered in the face of conditions more unfavorable 
than confront any other fish of our eastern rivers. At length, however, the 
unrestricted fishing became greedy to an overwhelming extent. The mouths of 
the rivers and the lower waters through which the shad must pass became so 
choked with nets that fishing gear farther upstream could make but slender 
hauls; and for several years there has been a steady decline in catch, which 
threatens to result in the extinction of the fishery. The Bureau has continued 
its efforts of propagation, but these are curtailed by the factor that is also 
destructive to the fishery. When they first enter the streams the shad are not 
ripe and are useless to the hatcheries, and the spawntakers must therefore wait 
for the run farther upstream; but with the recent exhaustive fishing in the salt 
waters so few fish have escaped that the egg collections have diminished to an 
alarming extent, being reckoned now in millions where formerly they were 
hundreds of millions. Under such conditions it is impossible to propagate 
enough fish to offset the quantities taken, and the shad fishery is fast being 
deprived of its one support ; while the present meager shad catch together with 
the enforced curtailment of propagation speaks even more convincingly of the 
value of artificial measures than did the preceding increase. 

The long continuance of the Penobscot as a salmon stream for many years 
after all other New England rivers had ceased to _ carry this fish is directly 
attributable to the work of the Bureau on that stream. So dependent on 



1400 BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF FISHERIES. 

artificial measures has been the perpetuation of the salmon supply that it is 
believed the obliteration of the run and the wiping out of a long-established 
fishery would ensue within five years after the suspension of fish-cultural opera- 
tions. Physical conditions in the Penobscot have become so unfavorable for 
the passage of salmon to the spawning grounds that natural reproduction is now 
almost if not altogether inhibited; and the only noteworthy source of young 
salmon is the eggs obtained by the Bureau from salmon purchased from the 
fishermen. 

Evidence is not lacking to show that the long-continued and increasingly 
extensive fish-cultural operations on the Great Lakes have prevented the deple- 
tion of those waters in the face of the most exhausting lake fisheries in the world. 
The luscious whitefish, the splendid lake trout, the excellent pike perch, or wall- 
eyed pike, may be hatched in such numbers as to assure their preservation 
without serious curtailment of the fisheries. The absence of concerted protective 
measures, however, on the part of the various States interested has the tendency 
to minimize the effects of cultivation and would seem to justify, if not impera- 
tively demand, the assumption of jurisdiction by the Federal Government. 

The magnitude of the salmon fisheries of the Pacific States has required 
very extensive artificial measures to keep up the supply. The operations of 
the Bureau, in combination with those of the States, have been gradually 
extended in both scale and scope until they have now attained a tremendous 
extent and are addressed to all the species whose cultivation is as yet demanded. 
The quantity of Pacific salmon eggs collected by the Bureau in 1908 was over 
200,000,000, equivalent to 1,700 bushels. 

A remarkable fact in the history of the Pacific salmons — of which there are 
five species — is that without exception all fish which enter any stream on the 
entire coast die after once spawning, none surviving to return to the sea. This 
wise provision of nature to prevent the overstocking of streams has been made 
foolish by the appearance of man on the scene; he not only catches the salmon 
in the coast waters and the lower courses of the rivers with gill nets, seines, and 
pound nets, in the upper waters with the same appliances supplemented by the 
fish wheels, and on the spawning grounds with all sorts of contrivances, but in 
certain sections even carries his foolhardy greed to the extent of barricading 
the streams so that no fish can reach the waters where their eggs must be depos- 
ited. Natural reproduction, thus so seriously curtailed, is not sufficient to keep 
up the supply in many of the streams where fishing is most active, for many of 
the eggs escape fertilization, many more are eaten by the swarms of predaceous 
fishes that haunt the spawning beds, and many are lost in various other ways 
during the long hatching period; while the helpless fry and alevin fall a ready 
prey to the same fishes in the upper waters and the young salmon have to run 



Bul. U. S. B. F., 190S. 



Plate CLIII. 




Catching and sorting the brood fish at a trout-cultural station in the Rocky Mountains. (See p. 1402.) 




Stripping and fertilizing trout eggs at a station in the Rocky Mountains. 



THE UNITED STATES BUREAU OF FISHERIES. I4OI 

the long gauntlet of the rivers only to meet new foes in the estuaries, on the 
coast, and in the open sea. 

It is, therefore, no wonder that artificial propagation on a large scale is 
imperatively demanded in the western salmon streams, and is actively urged 
and highly commended by fishermen, canners, business men, and the public at 
large. The beneficial influence of the work of the Government, supplemented 
by that of the three coast States, has been unmistakable in some sections and 
can not be doubted in general; but it is of course very difficult to distinguish 
definitely the increase due to natural from that due to artificial propagation. 
The history of the salmon fishery in the Sacramento River in California, and 
the recent increase in the catch notwithstanding most unfavorable physical 
conditions in that stream, afford unmistakable evidence of the value of cultiva- 
tion. Some very suggestive though not altogether conclusive information rela- 
tive to the benefits of salmon culture in the Columbia River has been furnished 
by marking young salmon before releasing them from the hatcheries. The 
number of marked salmon that returned as mature fish and were captured and 
reported indicates a very large percentage of survivals and suggests the growing 
dependence on artificial propagation for the maintenance of the runs. 

In the case of marine hatching operations it is so difficult to prove bene- 
ficial results that their utility is doubted by some people. When the Bureau 
began the cultivation of the cod and the lobster many years ago, it proceeded 
on the principle that the effects of the fishermen's improvidence could be coun- 
teracted by artificial propagation. The ultimate success of cod and lobster cul- 
ture on the Atlantic coast was therefore confidently expected, and the expec- 
tations have been more than realized. Practical results of an unmistakable 
character were first manifested nearly twenty years ago, since which time a 
very lucrative shore cod fishery has been kept up on grounds that were entirely 
depleted or that had never contained cod in noteworthy numbers in the memory 
of the oldest inhabitants. There is much unsolicited testimony on this point 
from many people who have profited from the operations of the Maine and Mas- 
sachusetts stations. The benefits have not been confined to the immediate 
vicinity of the hatcheries, but have extended westward and southward along 
the Middle Atlantic coast and eastward along the whole coast of Maine. The 
benefits of lobster culture have been slower in appearing, owing, in part at least, 
to the less extensive operations and the excessive mortality to which the young 
are liable; but from all parts of the New England coast there are being received 
reports of more lobsters, particularly of small size, than have been seen for many 
years, and there is reason to believe that the long-continued decline of the 
lobster fishery has been arrested. 



I402 BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF FISHERIES. 

ACCLIMATIZATION. 

Economic results of great value have come from the transplanting of native 
aquatic animals into waters in which they are not indigenous and from the 
introduction of fishes of foreign countries into the United States. The supply 
of food and game fishes of every section of the country has thus been increased 
and enriched, fisheries of vast extent have been established, and the pleasures 
of angling have been greatly enhanced. 

In all the waters of the eastern, central, and southern parts of the United 
States the range of every important native food and game fish has been extended 
artificially. Especially extensive work has been done with the black basses 
(Micropterus) , the crappies (Pomoxis), the rock bass (Ambloplites) , the sun- 
fishes (Lepomis), the brook trout (Salvelinus fontinalis) , the lake trout (Cris- 
tivomer namaycush) , the landlocked salmon (Salmo sebago), and the catfishes 
(Ameiurus and Ictalurus) . Among the more conspicuous examples of this class 
of work has been the stocking of the Potomac River with black basses, crappies, 
and catfishes. 

Among the eastern fresh-water fishes that have been established and more 
or less widely colonized in the Rocky Mountains or in transmontane regions are 
the large-mouth black bass, the crappy, the yellow perch, several catfishes and 
sunfishes, and the brook trout. Sportsmen of all the Western States can now 
find excellent black-bass and brook-trout fishing. Colorado, which has known 
the brook trout only a few years, is thoroughly stocked and affords unsurpassed 
opportunities for anglers. So successful has been the work in that State that 
the Government now draws most of its supply of brook-trout eggs therefrom, 
and the progeny of Colorado fish are used for replenishing eastern waters from 
which the original stock was taken for introduction into Colorado. 

The most noteworthy results of the introduction of native fishes into new 
regions have been seen in the Pacific States and represent two contributions from 
the Atlantic seaboard — the shad and the striped bass. The economic outcome 
of the acclimatization of these fishes is without parallel in the entire history of 
migratory species. 

The colonizing of the shad on the Pacific coast was one of the greatest 
achievements in fish acclimatization. Aside from the important financial 
results, the experiment was noteworthy because of certain changes that have 
occurred in the habits of the species, and because the feat of transporting shad 
fry across the continent at that early day was justly regarded as remarkable, 
and had a marked influence on the development of fish transportation, which 
has now attained such perfection. With the experiment were associated two 
of the pioneer fish culturists of America, whose name and fame are known the 
world over — Seth Green and Livingston Stone. Relatively small plants of 



THE UNITED STATES BUREAU OP FISHERIES. I403 

shad fry were made in the Sacramento River, California, in 1871, 1873, 1876, 
1877, 1878, and 1880, and in the Columbia River, between Oregon and Wash- 
ington, in 1885 and 1886, the aggregate for each stream being less than one 
million and only one hundredth of the plants sometimes made in an east-coast 
river in a single season. 

In April, 1873, the first shad was taken in California, and shortly there- 
after many more were caught in the vicinity of San Francisco; by 1879 the 
fish had become numerous, and by 1886 it had become one of the most abun- 
dant food fishes of the State. In 1876 or 1877 shad were first taken in the 
Columbia, so it is evident that an offshoot from the California colony soon 
migrated northward and had already established itself when the new emigrants 
arrived from the East eight or nine years later. By 1881 the fish seems to have 
become distributed along the coast of Washington, and in 1882 reached Puget 
Sound. It was nine years later, however, when the first pioneer was recorded 
from Fraser River, British Columbia, and the same year there was a report of 
shad in Stikine River, southeast Alaska. In 1904 a fine roe shad, caught at 
Kasilof, on Cook Inlet, was the first known arrival in that remote region. To 
the southward the fish is found as far as Los Angeles County, and the present 
range of the species thus extends along about 4,000 miles of coast. It is not 
improbable that the migrations of the shad will extend still farther. 

The two great centers of the shad's abundance are the Sacramento basin 
and the lower Columbia River, and it has been asserted that in either of these 
waters more shad could be taken than in any other water course in the country. 
The catch affords an inadequate criterion of the shad's abundance, for fishermen 
and dealers report that it would be easily possible, should the demand warrant 
it, to treble or quadruple the present yield, as most of the fish are now taken 
incidentally in apparatus set primarily for other species. Viewed from the 
purely business standpoint, the transplanting of shad to the Pacific coast has 
been a remarkably good investment. From the best information obtainable, 
the entire cost of the experiment was less than $4,000, while the aggregate 
catch for market in California, Oregon, and Washington to the end of 1907 was 
approximately 15,000,000 pounds, for which the fishermen received $330,000. 

The history of the introduction of the striped bass on the western seaboard 
is quite similar to that of the shad, and the result has been equally striking. In 
!879, 135 young striped bass from New Jersey were deposited in San Francisco 
Bay, and in 1882 a plant of 300 small fish from the same State was made in the 
same place. These meager colonies found the waters of California fully as con- 
genial as did the shad, and the fish has shown an almost uninterrupted increase 
in abundance to the present time. From the San Francisco region the species 
has gradually spread up and down the coast, and its range may eventually 
equal that of the shad. Up to 1896 the fish had not been reported outside of 



1404 BULLETIN OP THE BUREAU OF FISHERIES. 

California, but several years thereafter it began to run in some of the coast 
rivers of Oregon, and in the fall of 1906 half a dozen fine specimens were caught 
in traps at the mouth of the Columbia River, the first recorded from that stream. 

The striped bass, far removed from its ancestral home, has maintained the 
enviable reputation it enjoys in the East, and is freely recognized by its new 
friends as one of the best food and game fishes of the Pacific coast. A number 
of years ago the catch in California exceeded that of any other State, while now 
it surpasses that of any group of States along the eastern seaboard. The fish 
has become a prime favorite with anglers, and it is now probably the leading 
game fish of California. While it always commands a high price in the East, 
and is often to be ranked as a luxury, its abundance in California waters has so 
reduced the cost to consumers that even the most frugal can afford to eat it, 
and a comparison made some years ago showed that throughout the year the 
San Francisco dealers were underselling the New York dealers by many points. 
The economic importance of the introduction of the striped bass on the Pacific 
coast may be judged from the fact that the entire cost of transplanting was less 
than $1,000, while the value of the catch to the end of 1907 was about $925,000, 
a sum representing a yield of more than 1 6,500,000 pounds. 

The only fishes which the Western States have given to the remainder of 
the country are two trouts ; but the transplanting of several other trouts is now 
in progress, and systematic and extensive efforts are being made to establish 
several of the Pacific salmons in the New England rivers. The foremost con- 
tribution of the West to the East is the rainbow trout. The transplanting of this 
species in regions east of the Rocky Mountains has been a conspicuous success 
and has proved a decided boon to many communities. Its acclimatization by 
the General Government was first undertaken in 1880, although it is probable 
that some years prior thereto small plants had been made in new waters by 
state commissions or private persons. It has now been introduced into nearly 
every State and Territory, and has become one of the most generally known 
fishes in every part of the country. In Michigan, Missouri, Arkansas, Nebraska, 
Colorado, Nevada, and throughout the Allegheny Mountain region its trans- 
planting has been followed by especially noteworthy results. Its position in 
the streams and lakes of the Eastern States is that of a substitute and not a 
rival of the brook trout. It is well adapted for the stocking of waters formerly 
inhabited by the brook trout, in which the latter no longer thrives on account 
of changed physical conditions; it is also suited to warmer, deeper, and more 
sluggish waters than the brook trout finds congenial. 

The anadromous steelhead trout of the Pacific coast has been established 
in Lake Superior and other parts of the Great Takes as a result of plants of 
young fish made in 1896, and has also obtained a firm hold in a number of New 
England lakes, proving a very acceptable addition to the supply of food and 



But. U. S. B. P., 1908. 



Plate CLIV 




Salmon hatchery at Baird, Cal., the pioneer salmon hatchery on the Pacific coast, located on the 
McCloud River, a swift stream formed by the melting snow on Mount Shasta. The station can 
accommodate 25 million eggs at one time, and in 1907-S produced about 5 million young chinook 
or quinnat salmon and 10 million eyed eggs. Operations of this hatchery and its auxiliaries at 
Battle Creek and Mill Creek (73^ million eggs of the chinook salmon were taken in 1907-S) have 
been the prime factor in maintaining the salmon run in the Sacramento River. (See p. 1400.) 



THE UNITED STATES BUREAU OF FISHERIES. 1405 

game fishes. It readily adapts itself to a strictly fresh-water existence, and soon 
reproduces in its new habitat. 

The debt that sportsmen owe to the fishery service of the United States and 
the several States for their acclimatization work is heavy and increasing yearly, 
and the obligation is shared indirectly, but not the less actually, by hotel keepers, 
boatmen, merchants, landowners, and others. There could be cited numerous 
concrete examples of the varied benefits that have come to communities through 
the stocking of local waters with nonindigenous species. In some cases the 
improvement in the fishing has so increased the influx of people that land about 
the waters has increased several hundred per cent in value in a few years. 

Quite a number of Old World fishes have been introduced into American 
waters, and some of them have become well known in various parts of the 
country. Two European trouts, the brown trout and the Scotch lake trout, 
have been cultivated here for a score of years, and are now found in many 
private waters. The acclimatization of the European sea trout and the Swiss 
lake trout has also been effected. None of these fishes, however, has any 
superiority over native species, and the demand for them is decreasing. The 
Asiatic goldfish and the European golden ide or orf and tench are now very 
familiar ornamental species in America, but have little commercial value; 
the tench, however, is found in a few streams and reaches the markets in small 
numbers. Of all the exotic fishes, none is so well known, so widely distributed, 
so abundant, and so valuable as the carp, which was introduced from Germany 
upward of thirty years ago. This fish has excited a great deal of criticism, 
mostly unfriendly, and it is to-day regarded with disfavor by many people, 
chiefly anglers, because of real or supposed habits that are reprehensible. As 
a commercial proposition, the bringing of the carp to America has been of 
immense benefit, for to-day it is one of the common food fishes of the country, 
it is regularly exposed for sale in every large city and innumerable small towns, 
it supports special fisheries in 15 States, and it is regularly taken for market in 
35 States. The sales at this time amount to fully 20,000,000 pounds annually, 
for which the fishermen receive $500,000. 

The principal carp fishery is in Illinois, where fishermen have for years 
been reaping a golden harvest, finding a ready sale in the West and also sending 
large consignments to New York in special cars. The next important center 
is the western end of Lake Erie, in Ohio and Michigan, where large special 
ponds have been constructed and a peculiar form of cultivation has sprung up. 
Other important carp States are Colorado, Delaware, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, 
New Jersey, New York, Tennessee, Utah, and Wisconsin. 

It is not as a great market fish, however, that the carp is destined to attain 
its highest importance among us, but as a fish for private culture and home 
consumption. The number of farmers and small landowners who are alive to 



1406 BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF FISHERIES. 

the benefits of private fish ponds is increasing at a very rapid rate, and hundreds 
of thousands of such in all parts of the country, but particularly in the great 
central region, will find in the carp a fish well adapted to their needs and 
conditions. 

It is probable that the commercial value of carp is insignificant compared 
with its importance as a food for other fishes. It is extensively eaten by many 
of our most highly esteemed food fishes and is the chief pabulum of some of 
them in some places. In a number of the best black bass streams, like the 
Potomac and the Illinois, the carp is very abundant and is a favorite food of 
the young and adult bass, while in California the introduced striped bass has 
from the outset subsisted largely on carp and may owe its remarkable increase 
to the presence of this food. 

The consumption of carp is certainly destined to increase greatly; but 
even if the catch reaches no higher point the introduction of the carp into the 
United States will remain the leading achievement in fish acclimatization in 
recent times, and, with the exception of the original introduction of the same 
fish into Europe from Asia, the most important the world has known. 

Among the acclimatization experiments that have not yet been proved 
successful, but that there is every reason to believe will eventually become so, 
is the transplanting of the lobster (Homarus americanus) to the Pacific coast. 
There is probably no food animal of the eastern seaboard whose acclimatiza- 
tion on the Pacific coast would prove so great a boon as the lobster. As early 
as 1873 the Bureau made its first move to supply the deficiency, and up to 
1889 five attempts to establish the species were made, the deposits being at 
various points from Monterey Bay to Puget Sound. No positive results having 
appeared, the experiment was renewed in the fall of 1906, when a special carload 
of brood lobsters, numbering more than all the previous plants combined, was 
dispatched to Puget Sound, and in 1907 a still more extensive plant, aggregating 
about 1,000 adult lobsters, was made in the same water. Further consign- 
ments will be made until the lobster is removed from the list of failures and 
recorded as a great financial as well as gastronomic success. 

BIOLOGICAL INVESTIGATIONS AND EXPERIMENTS. 

The long-continued and systematic field and laboratory work of the Bureau 
has resulted in a most thorough knowledge of the distribution, variation, abun- 
dance, habits, etc., of the fishes and other creatures of the interior, coastwise, 
and offshore waters of the United States, Hawaii, and Porto Rico — a knowledge 
which is indispensable to the Government in its fish-culture work and to the 
various States and insular authorities in their legislative efforts to preserve 
their fishery resources. The practical results of this work are apparent in 
numerous specific instances. 



THE UNITED STATES BUREAU OF FISHERIES. 1407 

For a number of years the Bureau has been engaged in an endeavor to 
develop a practical method of fattening oysters. It is the custom of many 
ovster growers to transplant their oysters shortly before putting them on the 
market, to beds where the natural supply of food is luxuriant, and oysters fatten 
rapidly. In many localities such favorable places are few or entirely lacking, 
and the oystermen are compelled to put inferior stock upon the market, and thus 
forfeit the full measure of profit. The experiments that have been carried on 
are intended to develop a method of producing these fattening beds artifically 
in localities where they do not naturally exist. By the use of commercial ferti- 
lizers it has been found possible to produce the desired abundance of oyster 
food, and the only important problem yet awaiting solution is that of materially 
increasing the output of the artificial claire employed for the experiments. Con- 
siderable progress toward this end has been made recently, the yield of the claire 
in 1907 being 176 barrels, against 125 barrels in the preceding year; and as 
with a given equipment the expenses of operation are not materially increased 
whatever the product, this increase, if it can be carried further, as present con- 
ditions indicate, will result in sufficient margin between the cost of the treatment 
and the increased value of the fattened oysters to warrant its recommendation 
as a commercial process. The oysters fattened by this method are as fine as 
any placed on the market, and have been used with satisfaction at some of the 
best hotels and clubs of New York, Philadelphia, and "Washington. 

Upon two subjects in particular has the Bureau expended much energy 
and at last achieved results by persistently sounding the note of warning. The 
utmost efforts in artificial propagation can not save the shad fishery without 
the aid of laws to permit a certain number of spawning fish to reach the streams ; 
while on the other hand no practicable protective laws can save the oyster 
supply without cultural work to keep up the beds. The Bureau has no power to 
do more than hatch fish in the one case, devise methods of culture in the other, 
and cry out the needs of both; and it lies solely with the States to provide for 
the needs. 

North Carolina rose to the emergency of the shad situation a few years ago 
and asked the aid of the Bureau in determining the actual protection required 
by the shad, the actual condition of the fishery, and the possible remedies for 
a rapidly diminishing yield. The Bureau's recommendations were asked for by 
the state legislature, and a commission was appointed to draft salutary laws, 
which have since gone into effect, confining gear to prescribed areas and leaving 
clear channels for the passage of the fish. Immediate result was seen at the 
government hatchery in the Albemarle region. The collection of shad eggs in 
these waters in five years had dropped from seventy -five millions to six and one- 
half millions. The next year, which was the first of enforcement of the new 
laws, the collection was twenty-five and one-half millions, and in 1908 the most 



1408 BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF FISHERIES. 

successful shad hatchery was in this State, the egg collections exceeding fifty- 
five millions. 

The oyster fishery has had a common history in all of the Southern States, 
of which Maryland, once the foremost in oyster production and the last to resort 
to systematic cultural measures, affords the most notable example. The laws 
controlling the fishery in Chesapeake Bay have been designed to protect the 
natural beds, but have not encouraged or protected the oyster planter, and the 
natural beds, thus practically the sole reliance, in time failed to sustain the 
tremendous draft upon them. Between 1880 and 1897 the product fell 31.6 per 
cent; in 1904 it was 39 per cent less than in 1897. 

The Bureau had for many years pointed out the short-sighted policy that 
was resulting in the steady decline of the oyster industry, and was at length 
gratified to find that the State had taken heed of the warning and enacted a 
comprehensive law favoring oyster planting. The work that has now been 
undertaken by the Maryland Shell Fish Commission to remedy the alarming 
condition of the oyster grounds will be the most complete and accurate of its 
kind. It consists of the survey and delimitation, by the aid of the United States 
Coast and Geodetic Survey and the Bureau of Fisheries, of all natural oyster 
beds in Maryland waters, to be marked and set aside as public fishing grounds, 
operated under the existing protective laws. All other suitable grounds will 
then be reserved by the State to be leased to oyster planters, whose enterprise 
will be encouraged and their rights protected as was not possible heretofore. 

Up to 1898 there were few planted beds of oysters in Louisiana waters. 
Investigation of the oyster grounds by the Bureau in that year, however, led 
to the passage of beneficial laws and proved a general stimulus to oyster culture 
in that State, as is shown by the fact that some 20,000 acres of bottom were 
soon under cultivation. In 1906 the State Oyster Commission, still further to 
promote the local industry, again asked the Bureau's assistance, and large 
areas of unutilized bottom were examined to determine their productive capac- 
ity. The conditions were found to be exceptionally favorable, and experi- 
mental plants produced 3^ to 4 inch oysters in quantities of 1,000 to 2,000 
bushels per acre, within two years after the cultch was put down. In Barataria 
Bay, where there had been no oysters whatever, such promising beds were 
established that several hundred acres of adjacent bottom were immediately 
leased by prospective planters. Other localities, though they have so far 
shown no such conspicuous commercial enterprise, may be expected to prove 
equally productive. 

Experiments in sponge culture have been in progress for several years, 
and have now developed a practical system by which sponges may be produced 
from cuttings at a cost much less than that entailed in taking them from the 
natural beds. In view of the more rapid depletion of the natural beds which 



Bul. U. S. B. F., 1 90S. 



Plate CLV. 




Fisheries steatner Fish Hawk, engaged in hydrographic and biological surveys on the New England coast, 
and often employed as a shad hatchery on east-coast rivers. (See p. 13S5.) 




Main deck of steamer Fish Hawk, showing arrangement of McDonald automatic jars for hatching shad. 



THE UNITED STATES BUREAU OF FISHERIES. 1409 

will undoubtedly result from recent changes in the methods of the fishery, the 
Bureau is convinced that the preservation of the American sponge industry 
will depend upon cultivation; and as it is estimated that about $1,500,000 
worth of sponges were taken in Florida during the past year, the failure of the 
fishery would be a serious commercial loss to the State. 

In cooperation with the Rhode Island Fish Commission, the Bureau has 
developed new methods of lobster and soft-shell clam culture which are being 
applied with success in New England. Experiments with the hard-shell clam 
are now in progress at Beaufort. 

Important work recently undertaken is an effort to establish mussel culture 
in the Mississippi Valley. The supply of mussels in those waters, on which is 
based a pearl-button industry valued at about $5,000,000 per annum, with an 
investment of $6,000,000, is being rapidly exhausted, and the mussel fishermen 
and manufacturers recognize that without scientific cooperation of the Gov- 
ernment the business is doomed to early extinction. The Bureau in one season's 
work has practically, though not conclusively, shown a method by which the 
pearl mussels can be propagated, and is demonstrating that the work can be 
carried on at a comparatively small expense in connection with the already 
established operations in rescuing fishes from the overflowed lands, the fishes 
reclaimed being employed, without injury to themselves, in the dissemination 
of the larvae of the mussels. There have been liberated 25,000 fish, bearing 
about 25,000,000 young mussels ready to drop and begin their independent 
existence, and already past the stage when they are most subject to fatality. 
The work is also capable of application to waters under private control and 
will probably become a source of respectable revenue to farmers and others 
whose property embraces streams, ponds, and lakes. The importance of this 
work is urgently insisted upon by the National Pearl Button Manufacturers' 
Association, which embraces practically the entire capital invested in the 
business. 

In the field of fish diseases great progress has been made in the extension 
of knowledge of the causes of many of the fatalities which sometimes make a 
clean sweep of the hatcheries and which heretofore could not be adequately 
coped with because their etiology was not understood. The services of the 
scientific staff in this regard have been not only of great benefit to the Govern- 
ment, but are highly regarded and frequently availed of by state and private 
fish-culturists. Among the direct material aids rendered to fish culture in the 
past four or five years are the following: (1) Determination of the cause and 
remedy for the fatal malady known as the "gas disease," which at one station 
killed 1,200,000 brook-trout fry out of 1,300,000 on hand; (2) isolation of a 
bacterial organism producing a fatal disease in trout, and discovery of a possible 
remedy; (3) determination of the cause of a fatal protozoan disease in trout: 



1410 BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF FISHERIES. 

(4) discovery of a remedy for the diatom disease of lobster eggs and larvae; 

(5) studies of the causes of death of fish in captivity and the determination in a 
number of cases of the responsible peculiarities in the water supply ; (6) studies 
of the character of streams and the effects of various conditions on fishes, which 
studies have supplied much information on the subject to the public; (7) 
determination of the effects on fishes of galvanized iron and other metallic 
containers used in transportation of fish and fry, and indication of certain 
undesirable types of containers. 

COMMERCIAL FISHERIES. 

The importance to the fishing interests of the work of the Bureau in con- 
nection with the economic fisheries is widely appreciated and freely acknowl- 
edged. The statistical inquiries of the Bureau afford the only adequate basis 
for determining the condition and trend of the fisheries and the results of legis- 
lation, protection, and cultivation. Among the numerous special matters in 
which the Bureau has benefited the fisheries the following may be mentioned : 

By bringing to the attention of American fishermen new methods and new 
apparatus, new fisheries have sometimes been established and new fields 
exploited. 

By the introduction of gill nets jwith glass-ball floats for taking cod the 
winter cod fishery of New England was revolutionized. In a single season, 
shortly after the use of such nets began, a few Cape Ann (Gloucester) fishermen 
took by this means over 8,000,000 pounds of large-sized fish, and as much as 
$50,000 has sometimes been saved annually in the single item of bait. 

By the dissemination of information regarding new fishing grounds impor- 
tant fisheries have been inaugurated. Thus when the abundance of halibut off 
the coast of Iceland was made known by the Bureau a fishery was begun which 
yielded from $70,000 to $100,000 annually to the New England fishermen. 

The Bureau has experimented with various unused or little-used products 
in order to determine their economic value and to suggest the best ways of util- 
izing them. Less than fifteen years ago there was practically no market for 
the silver hake or whiting (Merluccius bilinearis), and immense quantities inci- 
dentally taken in pound nets and other apparatus were thrown away. The 
Bureau pointed out the possibility of preparing a marketable salt whiting; and 
it is a significant fact that in a few years the sales of this fish in New England 
have increased from about 100,000 pounds to 5,000,000 pounds. 

Owing to the appalling mortality among the crews of the New England 
fishing vessels, due in large part to the foundering of the vessels at sea, the 
Bureau many years ago undertook the introduction into the offshore fisheries 
of a type of craft which would combine large carrying capacity and great speed 



THE UNITED STATES BUREAU OF FISHERIES. 141I 

with enhanced safety. By correspondence, discussions in the daily press, per- 
sonal interviews, exhibition of models, and finally by the actual construction of 
a full-sized schooner (the Grampus) with the requisite qualities, the Bureau was 
able to inaugurate a momentous change in the architecture of fishing vessels, 
so that for a long time the New England schooners have been constructed on 
the new lines, with a constant minimizing of disasters and a decided increase 
in efficiency. For other fisheries and regions the Bureau has likewise advocated 
improved types of vessels and boats especially adapted to local conditions, and 
has published plans and specifications embodying the results of studies of the 
fishing flotilla of the world. The results of the Bureau's efforts in this line, in 
saving life and property, in increasing the usefulness of the vessels, and in 
improving the quality of the catch as landed can not be estimated, but the 
beneficial effects may be partly appreciated when it is stated that during the 
ten years ended in 1883, when the old types of vessels were in use, there were lost 
by foundering, from the port of Gloucester alone, 82 vessels, valued at more than 
$400,000, with their crews of 895 men; while during the ten years ending in 
1907 the losses from this cause aggregated only a fourth as many vessels and 
men. 



Bul. U. S. B. F., 1 90S. 



Plate CLVI. 




Fishery schooner Grampus, built by the United States Government as an object lesson. The general 
adoption of this type of swift, safe vessel in the offshore fisheries has resulted in great saving of 
life and property, and has otherwise promoted the fisheries. 




The fresh-fish fleet at T wharf, Boston. Larger quantities of fresh sea fish are landed at Boston than at any 
other port in the United States. The principal species are cod, cusk, haddock, hake, pollock, halibut, 
swordfish, and mackerel, together with lobsters, oysters, and clams. A day's receipts of fresh fish from 
the grounds off the New England coast have sometimes exceeded 2,000,000 pounds. 



LBJL 12 



